


the five stages of grief

by captainamericagf



Series: moving forward [1]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-02-05 12:39:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 31,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12794751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainamericagf/pseuds/captainamericagf
Summary: Joel’s a stubborn asshole. You're a stubborn asshole. Who the hell thought it would be a good idea for you to travel together?





	1. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: swearing, mentions of violence

1\. Denial

The sun is hot on your back and you know in that moment that you’d literally kill for some sunscreen. You’ve had to make the choice every summer – cover as much of your skin as possible and sweat off ten pounds per hour or deal with the itching, peeling sunburn. While your sweat glands thanked you for deciding to wear tank tops, your raw skin resented you.

Your legs dangle off the rooftop as you look over the town. From up here most of it is visible. There’s the gas station, the old library, a drug store. All of it’s changed, though. Long gone were the cute brick buildings and adorable shrubbery. It’s all replaced by barbed wire and stakes with heads on the top.

Fucking hunters ruin everything.

“Y/N?”

It’s your father’s voice behind you. You glance over your shoulder. He’s fiddling with his fingers like he always does when he wants to talk about something.

“I’m going to be fine,” you tell him.

“I’m not – well, yeah, I’m worried about you. We made this decision together.”

That’s sort of true. He’d come to you one day, explaining that once he was gone, the area wouldn’t be safe for you anymore. People left you alone because he was the only person with any medical knowledge. Hurting you would certainly piss him off. But without him – you would be stuck with a group of violent hunters with barely any hope of defending yourself.

So you both decided it was time to leave.

“I’m just thinking about the world out there.” He comes to stand near you, looking out over the town. “It’s safer here than a lot of other places.”

You bite back a scoff. You wouldn’t necessarily agree. Sure, you don’t have the government breathing down your necks, but it isn’t much better than the knife that’s just itching to dig into your backs.  

You open your mouth to speak but you’re joined by someone else. He says your father’s name and you turn back to the town. There’s silence as your father leaves you to go down the stairs into the apartment building. You know better than to follow, but you do it anyway.

“You got the truck ready?” asks your father.

“Yep. All ready to go.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“I’m gonna take her to Atlanta. I’ve got some loose ends to tie up, but my brother-”

“Don’t you let your fucking brother take her.” Your father’s voice is as sharp.

“Adam-”

“Listen, I trust you, Tommy. You’re a nice guy. But Joel?” He laughs incredulously. “He’s a fucking animal and you know it.”

Tommy, on the other hand, is confident and unwavering, but you have a feeling it’s all an act. You always have. “I trust him.”

“But I don’t. This is my daughter we’re talking about here. The first moment he gets, he’ll kill her and take everything she has.”

“He won’t do that.”

“Then you’re lying to yourself. Your brother is most goddamn brutal hunter I’ve ever known. And you know that too.”

“And that’s how he’ll get her there safely. Joel’s got a lot riding on this too.”

“If Joel is involved, then you can say goodbye to your payment.”

“Wait a minute, Adam.”

“No, the deal was _you_ take her to New York.”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t tell me this is one of your let’s-see-if-Joel-still-has-a-heart missions. He doesn’t and I have a feeling he hasn’t for a long time.”

“You don’t know him like I do.”

“I know enough.”

“Do I get to have any say in this?” you say. Your father and Tommy stop their bickering and turn their attention to you. “Dad, I’m in my thirties.”

“I know.”

“And that means I get to decide what’s best for me.”

Of course what’s best for you is to get a ride out of Florida. You really don’t give a shit which brother it is that gets you there.

You know Tommy – he’s nice and sweet and not like the other hunters. He doesn’t kill unless absolutely necessary and he’s saved your skin on several occasions. But Joel? The guy’s a cryptid. He stays away from most other people, only really speaking with Tommy and that’s if he’s in a good mood. He sulks and yells and kills anyone that has anything, just like every other hunter. You sometimes wonder if he’ll turn on the rest of the group, killing everyone. Including you.

It was nicer once he left for Atlanta. Word spread that the QZ there fell and everything was up for grabs. Normally the group doesn’t travel far outside of Tallahassee, but supplies are running low and everyone’s becoming desperate.

And, apparently, so is your father.

“She’s got a point,” says Tommy. There’s a tinge of humor in his voice.

“Dad, you’re the one that wanted me to get out of the city,” you say. “If I stay here, I’ll end up dead. If I leave, I might stay alive.”

Your father wipes the sweat off his brow and blinks hard when it drips into his eyes. A sigh escapes his lips. “I’ll know if he doesn’t get her there.”

“You can trust him,” Tommy insists.

There’s a long, hard silence where your father takes his time contemplating. Tommy waits patiently while you start getting antsy. The longer this drags out, the more difficult it will be.

“He better get her there in one piece,” says your father.

“If he doesn’t, I’ll kill him myself.”

Tommy says it like it’s a joke. He even glances at both of you like he’s expecting you to laugh. But there’s a strange look in his eyes that tells you otherwise.

“I’ll get the truck ready,” says Tommy. Without another word he leaves.

“I’m gonna be fine, dad,” you say to break the uneasy tension that’s been building.

Your father doesn’t say anything. Instead he pulls a sealed envelope out of his back pocket and hands it to you. His hands wrap around yours. They’re shaking.  

“What is this?” you ask.

“You give it to Joel when he gets you there. That way I’ll know if I’m going to kill him or not.”

“Dad-”

“Please. Just do this for me.”

You hesitate but ultimately slip the envelope into your backpack, mixed in with some supplies. Flashlight. Batteries. MREs. Water. Ammo. Your gun is already strapped to your thigh.

“You got everything?” he asks.

“Everything I can physically carry.”

He pulls you in for a hug and you’re hit with the realization this is the last time you’ll see him. It’s bittersweet. You’ve finally got a way out, but you’re leaving everything you know behind. Including the last person who really cares about you.

“Please stay safe.”

“I will, dad.”

You exchange I-love-yous and part ways.

Tommy is waiting by the truck and you greet him, throwing you backpack in the front before climbing in.

“Your dad not sending you off?” he asks.

“We’re good.”

He peels his eyes off of you and starts up the truck. “Here’s the plan, Y/N. I’m gonna take you to Atlanta and Joel is gonna take you to New York. I know he’s a bit of an asshole-”

“That’s an understatement.”

“-but he’ll keep you safe. I can promise you that.”

You chew on your bottom lip. Promises don’t mean much these days. “You don’t really trust him, do you?”

“Don’t matter.”

You don’t say anything else and neither does he.

* * *

 

The trip to Atlanta isn’t uneventful. It takes three different cars and over a week to get there in one piece. Your knife is covered in dried blood from infected and other hunters hell-bent on getting what you have. A few of them back off when they recognize Tommy and you have a feeling it’s not his face they’re afraid of.

You’re both seasoned experts at killing. You have to be to survive. But you both feel guilt for the lives you take, even in self-defense. You talk about it in the car, switching between driver and passenger. It feels good to get it all off your chest and you can tell Tommy’s been holding it all in for a long time.

“And what about Joel?” you ask. “How does he feel?”

“About killing?” Tommy weighs his words carefully. “I really don’t know.”

Traveling with him becomes a comfortable routine that is ultimately destroyed when you finally reach Atlanta.

It doesn’t take long to find your group, though you notice a few people are missing. You don’t bother talking about it. Tommy asks around, one of the hunters saying Joel’s at the north checkpoint. You want to wait in the truck, but Tommy insists you come with him.

Joel is the same asshole that you’ve always known. He’s got blood all over him and you know it’s not just from infected. You and Tommy find him getting ammo off the body of a dead soldier and loading up his own gun. When he hears you both approach he straightens.

“What are you doing here?” He addresses Tommy and Tommy alone. You stay far enough behind.

“I got a job for you, big brother.”

“A job.” It isn’t a question. Joel eyes Tommy with suspicion, his gaze darting to you. Maybe he’s putting the pieces together, but you’re not sure what story he’s creating in his head.

“Doc wants her to get to New York. They used to live there in some doomsday bunker.”

“And?”

“And I need you to take her.”

“I ain’t got time for this.”

“He’ll give us two hundred ration cards.”

This gets Joel’s attention.  Fucking typical. “What?”

“He’s been hoarding them.”

“No shit.”

“All you gotta do is take her to New York and come back alive. We’ll be set for a long time, Joel. We can actually start living better lives in a zone.”

“The zones ain’t any better than we got out here. Just look at this shithole.”

“We can’t keep going like this – killing first and asking questions later.”

Joel gets defensive; his voice suddenly has a sharper edge. “It’s what we do to survive.”

“We’re not really surviving if we gotta do shit like this. It’s just one job, Joel. I trust you to get her there more than I trust myself.”

Joel looks at you again and you squirm under his inspection. It feels like he’s reading your entire history and personality with a single once over. Maybe he’s looking for the easiest way to kill you. If he tried, he’d probably succeed. He’s taller than you, he’s stronger than you, and he’s got no morals to speak of.

“Get her to New York, get back,” says Joel. He mulls over it for a few more seconds. “He better not be bluffing.”

“He’s not. I saw the cards myself.”

Joel nods. “Alright then.”

You follow them both to the truck, Tommy grabbing your arm before you can get in.

“Be safe, alright?”

“What? Afraid he’ll kill me?”

“Nah, I’m more afraid you’ll kill _him_.”

A smile touches your lips and he clasps your shoulder in farewell.

“You know how to shoot?” Joel asks once you’re both in the truck.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Just don’t shoot at me.”

“We’ll see how this goes,” you say mostly under your breath, but still loud enough for him to hear.

You swear his lips twitch, but it happens so fast that you’re second guessing yourself. It was probably just a trick of the light. Joel doesn’t smile.

He puts the truck and drive and you leave Atlanta behind.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: violence, swearing, creepy behavior

Traveling with Joel is strikingly different than with Tommy. While the younger of the two provided you with laughs and stories and some kind of companionship, Joel gives you none of that.

He barely says anything, only speaking to you to give you orders. You attempt conversation multiple times, but he doesn’t bite.

It’s only three days before you have to abandon the truck on a crowded highway. You slip your backpack on and follow Joel as he leads you in between the cars, crossing over the ones in your way. You stop every once in a while, checking out what’s inside some of them.

You almost start crying when you find one with the bodies of a family inside.

“We ain’t got time for this.”

Joel’s waiting for you several yards away, his hands on his hips like an irritated parent. You realize then how much your knee has really started to hurt.

“Can we take a break?” you ask. You sit down on the hood of a car, rubbing your knee as if massaging would make the pain go away.

“No.”

“Let me rephrase that. I’m taking a break. If you wanna keep going without me, that’s fine.”

He stops and grumbles something you can’t hear. To your surprise he sits down on the trunk of the car in front of you and checks his ammo.

“I appreciate you doing this,” you say. “I know you’d rather be doing literally anything else.”

He grunts in response.

The rumbling of thunder reaches you and you turn to look at the dark sky behind you.

“We gotta keep moving,” says Joel. “Storm’s not that far off.”

“We’ll just take shelter in a car.”

“We’re going.” He talks to you like you’re a child and he’s the parent and God does that bother you. He can’t be much older than you, maybe by a few years. He’s got little bits of gray at his temples, but his hair is mostly a dark black. His forehead has a few permanent lines, but is mostly wrinkle free.

You grit your teeth, but ultimately decide to wait for a better opportunity to piss him off.

* * *

 

The storm comes quicker than anticipated and Joel reluctantly acquiesces. You both sit in an abandoned car, Joel behind the wheel and you next to him. There’s a peacefulness that comes with the rain pattering down on the roof and you close your eyes. They snap open when Joel pushes his door, sticking a bottle out, collecting the rainwater before pulling back inside and taking a drink.

“You want any?” He offers you the bottle.

“I’m good.”

“Suit yourself.”

He takes a drink and you turn your attention outside.

“How creepy would it be if the car started shaking?” you wonder out loud.

“What?”

“Like in _Jurassic Park_.”

He thinks about it then snorts in amusement.

It’s the most you’ve gotten out of him since you left Atlanta and you want to pursue a conversation, but you don’t want to startle him. He’s like a wild animal – get too close and he’ll try to bite your hand off.

When the rain lets up you leave the car behind and trudge forward, eventually coming across an exit that leads you to a small city with a shit ton of infected.

The city had a relatively sturdy fence around it, but shit must have hit the fan not all that long ago. The bodies aren’t exactly fresh, but the infected aren’t old enough to be clickers. At first you’re able to take them down silently with your knife, Joel strangling the ones that nearly give away your position. But eventually one spots you and breaks into a sprint. The screaming alerts the others and Joel roughly pulls you into a building and holds the door while you push a bookcase until it tips over.

“We can’t stay here,” he says.

The infected are pounding on the door, the bookcase being pushed forward with every thump. They’ll break through in only a matter of minutes.

You look around. It’s a bookstore with shelves that go up to the ceiling and mobile ladders that slide across them. God how you’d love to stay and grab as many books as you can carry. There’s no entertainment when you’re stuck in the passenger seat. At least when you’re driving you can do something with your hands.

You spot chipped away drywall behind a bookcase.

“Joel, come help me with this.”

He doesn’t argue and you both push the bookcase to the side, revealing a gaping hole in the wall. The space behind it is dark and your flashlight shows it goes on for a ways. It’s better than nothing.

“Who wants to go in the creepy tunnel first?” you ask.

Joel pushes past you.

“And we have a volunteer.”

You help Joel pull the case back over the hole, but it doesn’t cover it completely. At least it’ll keep the infected at bay while you both get stuck in the tunnel and probably starve to death. Wait, do you die of thirst first? You can’t remember. The point still stands.  

Your flashlights illuminate the path enough to keep you from walking into anything. Joel leads the way and you keep close on his heels, keeping an eye out behind you.

The tunnel leads downwards and eventually back up into a restaurant with a similar hole. Your mind is racing with theories you would have shared with any other companion, but not with Joel. He’d probably make fun of you, maybe not even acknowledge you.

As you cover up the hole in the restaurant, a voice catches you both by surprise.

“Joel? The fuck are you doing here?”

You spin around, instinctively drawing your gun. Joel’s got the same thing in mind, but he lowers his revolver slightly.

There’s four men in front of you, one standing in front of the rest. The leader? He’s got a tattoo on his neck that looks like a cross. It’s dark against his pale skin. His head is shaved, a pair of broken sunglasses resting above his eyebrows.

Hunters. Of fucking course.

“Hey, there’s no need for that,” says the leader. He puts his hands up in surrender.

“Put the gun down,” Joel says to you quietly. He holsters his own, approaching the leader while you cautiously place your gun back next to your thigh.

The hunter leader hugs Joel and it seems one-sided. Joel is tensed up, rigid. The leader either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

“What are you doing here?” asks the leader. “It’s quite a distance from Nashville.”

Nashville? You shoot Joel a questioning look that he purposefully ignores.

“Got a little sidetracked,” he says.

The leader laughs. “I’ll bet. Y’know, it’s funny that we end up running into one another like this. Almost like fate.”

“We’re just cutting through, Charlie.” There’s something passive about Joel that puts you on edge. He’s on the defensive and you don’t like it. 

“Why leave so quickly? You only just got here.” Charlie pulls out a seat at the table and gestures. “Let’s chat.”

“We’re on a tight schedule.”

“In the apocalypse? Nothing can be that important.”

Charlie starts eyeing you and you suddenly feel nauseous. Joel notices it too and he takes a step in front of you.

“We’ll just be on our way.”

“Alright, alright,” says Charlie. “I’ll cut the bullshit.” He steps close to Joel, their eyes meeting. “You owe me.”

“Now’s not the time.”

“And when is it? Hmm?” Charlie steps forward. He doesn’t come up to Joel’s height, but he makes up for it in his demeanor. “I sent those tourists your way when I could’ve used the supplies for my men. I expected something in return.”

“We can talk about this some other time.” Joel speaks like he’s trying to diffuse a hostage situation. You kind of feel like he really is.

“You’re not in position to negotiate.” Charlie glances at you. “Give me the girl and your debt will be paid.”

Joel puts his arms out as if to shield you. “She ain’t property.”

“Oh? She your…girlfriend?” There’s a small smile that creeps up on Charlie’s face and you have a feeling it isn’t congratulatory.

“It don’t matter who she is.”

Charlie sighs and scratches the back of his neck with the barrel of his gun. “Well, we’re not letting you leave until I get what I want.” He lowers his voice and it sends an eerie shiver down your spine. “And you know I always get what I want.”

For a moment you think Joel is going to hand you over to save his own skin. You never really expect anything else. Joel’s not a fucking humanitarian, he’s a survivor who’ll do anything he can to keep going. But he surprises you, pulling the knife from your belt and slices Charlie’s throat. The cut isn’t deep, but it’s enough to cause alarm, Charlie’s hands flying up to cover the wound as blood spurts in between his fingers. The other hunters are too stunned to react fast enough, giving you and Joel enough time to run out of the building.

Bullets strike the car you hide behind and Joel hands you the knife. He pulls out his own gun and blind fires at them.

“What do we do now?” you ask. Bullets hit the top of your cover and you duck down even farther.

Joel starts rifling through his backpack. “I’m working on it.”

He pulls out a smoke bomb that at least gives you a chance to run away. You take cover in a building a block down, hiding in a broom closet with a mop blocking the door. You’re pressed up against Joel, enough to smell the dirt, grime, and sweat that’s built up over the years. You can see flyaway hairs and where he got a shaving cut not that long ago.

The hunters come and go through the building and once Joel deems it clear, you head out, sneaking your way through the town and taking down any stragglers in your way.

Joel is a natural at it, giving you silent orders as you simultaneously take down your enemies. It’s a little harder for you – you’re panicked and weaker, but you’re used to driving a knife into people’s throats and watching them bleed out in front of you.

Never gets any easier though.

Within a few hours you’ve made it to the next town over and you’re no longer being chased, but the peace won’t last for long.

“Thanks for back there.” You tell Joel. When he looks confused, you continue. “For not giving me up, I mean.” You don’t realize how low the bar is until you’ve said it out loud. _Thanks for not being a despicable human being_. Joel hears it too and he has to tear his eyes away from you. Is that guilt you see on his face? It’s hard to tell. You don’t know what most emotions look like on him. He wears the same expression like truckers wear hats. Constant.

“You’re welcome,” he says. It’s quiet enough that you wonder if he’s hoping you don’t hear, but you do.

At least it’s something.


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for the lovely comments! <3
> 
> chapter warnings: swearing, mention of suicide, violence

You’re on foot as you crossover from Georgia to South Carolina. The plan is to get close to the coast and follow it north, make things easier.

Walking through abandoned city after abandoned city takes its toll on your mental state. You hadn’t traveled for a long time – you and your father left New York only a few years after the outbreak, hoping to find some of his extended family in Florida, but instead finding them all hanging from the ceiling.

There were more QZs still up at that point and you passed through – or maneuvered around – quite a few of them. You met people, good and bad. Families. Groups. But now it’s all gone, replaced by overgrown flora and rotting corpses.

You wanted to deny it, pretend the outbreak hadn’t happened. Back home you could for a while, but then like everything else, it all went to shit.

You don’t know how it’s affecting Joel and you have a feeling it doesn’t faze him at all. You wouldn’t be surprised if he’s responsible for the deaths of entire towns. _Thank God he’s on my side._

You stop for breaks every few hours, your knee burning as you try to keep up with Joel’s fast pace. He doesn’t understand why you need to stop and you’re too stubborn to tell him. What if he thinks you’re weak? Or worse, what if he starts treating you like you’re made of glass? You may not be the apocalypse veteran Joel is, but you can certainly handle yourself.

Columbia becomes your new short term destination. By the time you get there its November and the weather is certainly colder than it ever was in Florida. You realize how much you liked living where you never really needed a jacket and you eventually take one from a clothing store in a mall where you spent a night.

Joel, on the other hand, enjoys the colder weather somewhat. Or at least that’s what you think. You figure he’s a native of the south, surely he’s used to warmer weather. But then again, traveling can be brutal on sweat glands.

“Where are you from?” you ask out of the blue.

Joel doesn’t stop or even look back at you. “It’s close to sunset. We should find some place to hold up for the night.”

You bite down on your cheek. God, the man is just as stubborn as you are. Tommy had to be out of his mind to think you’ll both get to New York without killing each other.

You take shelter in a motel close to the highway where Joel hopes to find a working car the next day. The road is relatively clear and he believes you can cover a good distance. You stop at a Super 8 for the night.

As you’re nibbling on a granola bar for your dinner, you decide to push again. “I’m gonna guess you’re from Texas.”

Joel, who has been pretending to sleep with his backpack as a pillow, shifts on the bed. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, you’re Southern. That much I can tell. But you just have that vibe to you.”

“Didn’t know I have a vibe.”

“It’s hard to get to underneath the rocky exterior. Haven’t found the heart of gold yet.”

He doesn’t laugh, but he blows air out of his nose. “I’m guessing you’re a yankee.”

“I would think the whole New York thing kind of gives it away.” You pause, choosing your words carefully. “You ever gone back to Texas?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

This time he’s more forceful, like you’ve struck a nerve. God, he’s so touchy. If he would just _talk_ you’d know what subjects are hard for him. God knows you have your own demons. But instead you’re forced to play twenty questions and hope he doesn’t burst a blood vessel if you venture into sensitive territory. It’s like a fucking minefield and you’re not sure how long it’ll be before he explodes. Or you.

When morning comes you pack up and head for the highway. You take down the straggling clickers roaming around and Joel finds a car that’ll work. You get onto 95, occasionally getting out to push away stray cars that stood in your path.

Like always, you’re forced to leave the car behind only a few days later when a band of hunters attacks and you’re both pulled out of the car, you kicking and screaming. You’re unable to reach your knife or your gun and cry out when something is lodged into your side. A gunshot rings out and your assailant falls limp. You’re suddenly exhausted and decide to lay there, eyes closed, ignoring the sounds of struggle beside you. You try to gather up some strength that you use on the person who grabs you, a fist being caught by a hand twice the size of yours.

“Stop, it’s me!”

Joel’s grip is tight, but not enough to hurt you. He’s…concerned? You’re not sure. But if he is, you know it’s not for your wellbeing. It’s for the two hundred ration cards that are flashing before his eyes.

He’s saying something to you, but it’s so distant and soon everything goes black.

You dream about being home and when you find Joel at the kitchen table you wake up.

* * *

 

Your eyes are heavy and there’s a stinging pain in your side, but it’s nothing like your knee. You’re laying down on a couch, a bandage over your abdomen and under your shirt with a spot of blood where your pain is the worst.

You lay your head back on the pillow and close your eyes. They burn, not just from the pain, but from the embarrassment and the frustration. The last thing you want is for Joel to think you’re weak. You’re not sure why, but you do have a few theories lined up.

For one, he’s an asshole and assholes love to be assholes.

“How ya feeling?”

Joel’s walking over to you, fresh bandages in his bloody hands. Is that your blood?

“I feel like I got stabbed.”

He gets down on the ground beside you and asks you to sit up. You lift up your shirt high enough so that he can remove your old bandages and inspect your wound before applying the new ones.

“Next time you get stabbed, don’t try to kill me.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you. Also what makes you think there’ll be a next time?”

“There’s always a next time. When you’re feeling better we’ll head out.”

“Let’s go now.” You get up, but your head turns to mush and the room is tilting at a nauseating angle.

“Hey, hey, hey,” says Joel. He steadies you, tightly grasping your upper arms. “I’m not gonna have you dying on me.”

For a moment you can convince yourself that he actually gives a shit if you live or die, but you can see the ration cards in his eyes like dollar signs. You’re just a job, cargo, whatever he calls you in his head. God knows what your father would do to him if he comes back too early.

“What’s the difference if I’m laying here or traveling out there?” you ask.

“I ain’t a doctor but I’m pretty sure walking and resting are two different things.” He sounds extremely irritated, like you’re causing him more trouble than it’s worth.

Defeated, you sit back down on the couch and finally admit that it’s not the world spinning, it’s definitely your head.

“I don’t wanna be a burden,” you say.

Joel doesn’t respond and you can’t tell if it’s because he agrees or disagrees. He probably won’t say either way.

As you’re drifting off to sleep you hear him say, “I’m from Austin, by the way.”


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: swearing, drinking, violence

2\. Anger

The hours you spent recovering are nothing compared to the weeks you’re set behind when roadblock after roadblock sends you from South Carolina to fucking Arkansas. By that time most of December has gone by.

“We should celebrate the new year.”

Joel glances at you before returning his eyes to the road. “Oh, yeah? How do you propose we do that?”

“Stay up past midnight, throw some confetti,” you say. “Maybe have a drink. Get drunk and kiss when the clock hits twelve.” The words slip out of your mouth before you can catch them and your cheeks heat up. _Shit, what if he thinks I’m hitting on him?_

You’d be lying if you said you didn’t find him attractive. Physically he’s nice to look at with his messy dark hair and scruffy beard. He’s got nice, tan arms and you like to imagine he’s got some muscle under that shirt. Not to mention his voice. You could listen to him talk for hours and never get bored.

But then you remember all the blood on his hands and the blood on your hands and the job in front of you. Once you’re in New York, he’ll be heading back and forgetting about you. And honestly, that’s the way you like it.

He can get snippy, but you can tell he’s holding in the temper you’ve seen back at the camp. You’ve seen him going through the belongings of innocent people, covered in their innocent blood. You know what he can do. You have a bad feeling one day he might snap and if you’re in the way, God help you.

Joel doesn’t seem bothered by your comment and it’s a massive relief.

“If we’re getting drunk we need to find something good. I ain’t drinking cheap shit.”

Wait, is he serious? Joel doesn’t joke around. Sometimes he makes a funny remark here and there, but he never really _jokes_.

“Then we’ll have to find something that ‘ain’t cheap shit.’” You lay the southern accent on heavily and his lips twitch. This time you know it’s for real and not just made up in your head.

It takes quite a bit of searching, but eventually you find a bottle of something that Joel approves of and you hole yourselves up in the storage room of a gas station on New Year’s Eve.

“Your watch work?” you ask.

His other hand goes to it, a finger circling the clock. “No.” It’s his stern voice, the voice you’ve come to know as the you-keep-asking-about-this-and-I’ll-throw-a-temper-tantrum voice so you let it drop.

“That’s fine,” you say. “We’ll just count down.”

And that’s what you do. Joel fills your glasses and you both clink them together when you get to “one.”

“Happy New Year!” you exclaim before downing the entire glass in one swig. It burns as it runs down your throat.

Unfortunately for you, you’re a lightweight. You never really drank much before the end of the world and you certainly didn’t drink afterwards. Joel holds his own pretty well, but you’re tipsy by the time your second glass is empty.

Joel seems pretty amused by it.

He’s surprisingly alert while you ramble on and on about whatever comes to your mind. “Oh, Joel! Do you think celebrities are still alive? We should go to LA! It’ll be like _Zombieland_ except this time Bill Murry won’t get shot.”

He listens to everything you say and voice in the back of your mind says you’ll regret everything in the morning.

Eventually you’re late into the night (early into the morning?) and you’re hit with a realization.

“Wait, wait, wait, we didn’t kiss!”

Joel cocks his head to the side. “Kiss?”

“Yes! I said we’ll get drunk and kiss for the new year but we got drunk and didn’t kiss.”

“Well, first of all, I ain’t drunk.”

“Well, first of all, I _am_.”

“Which is exactly why you’re gonna rest so you can wake up tomorrow with a killer hangover.”

“Joel, we had a plan.” You use the whiniest voice you can manage and you’re close to stomping your foot like a five year old.

“Alright, if you still wanna kiss me when you’re sober, then you can kiss me.” He’s humoring you, but in your inebriated state it’s hard to register.

“Okay.” You lay down on the sleeping bag, curling up into a ball. Joel lays a blanket over your body and you pull it close. “I really like your voice, Joel.”

He pauses. “Is that so?”

“Mhmm. It’s nice to listen to. Also it’s pretty sexy.”

He hums in response and you drift off to sleep.

* * *

 

The next morning you wake up with very little memory of what happened the previous night after you started reciting your poetry from third grade. Not to mention it feels like your head is going to explode if someone so much as drops a pin.

You dare to open your eyes and find the room completely dark. While your vision adjusts, you notice Joel isn’t there. Probably keeping watch, you figure. God, how drunk were you last night? How embarrassing.

When you finally gather up enough strength you go into the front of the store to find Joel counting his bullets. The sunlight through the windows blinds you and sends your head into a spasm.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” you say.

Your voice doesn’t startle Joel – instead he casually glances over his shoulder. “Good morning to you too.”

“I feel like I got drunk and then repeatedly smacked my head into a wall.”

“You’re half right.”

There’s a weird silence that falls between you and you can’t put your finger on why. Oh, God, did you say something creepy? You _knew_ it was a bad idea to be checking him out. What were you thinking getting drunk like that? It was never going to end well.

“Thanks for leaving me in the dark,” you say in an attempt to diffuse the tension. “I mean, the dark room.”

He doesn’t answer.

Joel stays relatively quiet as you continue traveling. It’s not a _bad_ quiet, per se. Not the quiet he started out with in Atlanta. But it’s a tense quiet, like he’s got something he wants to say but doesn’t know how to say it. By the time you go through two more towns it’s killing you, but you don’t want to poke the bear so to speak. If there’s anything you’ve learned about Joel, it’s that he’ll talk if he wants to talk.

You take breaks for your knee and you try to build up the courage to tell him about it. Over time he’s become less irritated by your need for breaks, but he still tries to cut them short. You’d rather he just ask you _why_ but Joel seems pretty intent on keeping things as mysterious as possible. You figure he’s one of those tough guys that thinks if he gets too close to someone he loses at life or something equally ridiculous.

About a hundred miles away from Memphis you both get separated when a large group of clickers try to track you down. You’d taken refuge in a small town mall for the night and when you hear the familiar clicking noise, you both try to quietly escape, but a trap left by a previous traveler alerts each fucking clicker and suddenly Joel’s got one chomping at him and you’re screaming to get their attention. You don’t bother looking at Joel’s face as you get all of them after you and you’re forced to run as fast as you can while they chase you like a hoard of cannibalistic sheep.

You end up trapped in the security room with no way out except maybe a vent in the ceiling, but you find out the movies make it all look so easy. There’s two bullets left in your gun and you’re wondering if you’ve only got one option left until a loud _BANG_ in the distance gets your attention.

The clickers run off in the direction of the noise and you’re able to slip out of the room.

You stay quiet as you search the mall, listening closely, until there’s a hand over your mouth and you’re being pulled in a janitor’s room. You recognize Joel’s scent immediately and it’s a fucking relief. You scan over him, looking for any bite marks, but your examination is cut short when he starts to berate you.

“That was goddamn stupid, you know that?” His voice is a whisper, but there’s built up rage in his words that pisses you off.

“I saved your ass,” you say.

“And almost died.”

“Alright then, let’s make a new rule. If Joel’s in trouble I’ll run like a coward and leave him for dead. Sound good?”

He grunts in response. It’s become his go-to answer when he has nothing else to say.

You’re able to escape the mall unscathed, but there’s pent up anger in both of you that’s going to have to come out at some point.

All your life you’ve been taught communication is key. No relationship can last if you can’t talk to each other. And while you and Joel don’t exactly have a conventional relationship in any form, if he would just _talk_ so many of your problems would be solved.

After a few hours you’ve calmed down, but there’s still unresolved tension in his shoulders. He brutally kills the infected you come across and you’re happy he’s found some sort of outlet for his anger.

When night comes he doesn’t even bother telling you he’s taking the first watch. He just heads outside the house you’ve set up in and you’re left in a dark silence.

Once you’re sure he’s out of earshot, you start to cry.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: swearing, violence

You see a new side of Joel when you stumble upon a small settlement on the outskirts of Memphis. There’s three families living in a relatively self-sustaining town. They’re all nice to you and offer you a place to stay for the night.

“I don’t trust them,” says Joel. You’ve been given the option of sleeping in separate guest rooms, but Joel is insistent you stick together.

“They gave us pie,” you say.

“That don’t mean anything.”

You sleep peacefully that night, the best you have in years. You’re awoken in the early morning by a bloody Joel who refuses to answer your questions as he practically drags you to a truck that he’s loaded up with more supplies that the both of you need. Your questions stop when you spot the body of the woman who gave you pie.

* * *

 

Tension reaches an all-time high and you know the dam is going to burst at some point.

It’s like you’ve both taken every step backwards, all the way back to how you started. Actually, it’s even worse. At first you gave Joel the benefit of the doubt; everyone has their demons. But now you know that Joel might be someone else’s demon and it makes you nauseous.

Your mind is more at ease when you convince yourself that he was right – the families in the town were not to be trusted and he saved your lives. But there’s this itch you can’t scratch and the more you think about it the worse it gets.

“You didn’t kill them in self-defense, did you?” It’s not a question and Joel knows it.

He doesn’t take his eyes off the road. “I did what I had to do.”

Fucking hunter through and through. Why had you thought he’d be any different? You’d heard the stories that passed around the camp. But he’d been nice to you and saved your life and you thought maybe, just _maybe_ he’s just a guy trying to survive in a world determined to destroy him from the inside out.

“You didn’t need to kill them.”

“We needed the supplies.”

“We could’ve asked.”

He laughs. It’s humorless and belittling and you’re ready to punch him right then and there. “I know you got coddled-”

“I wasn’t fucking coddled.”

“How’d you survive then?” He’s risen his voice. Anger seems to be bubbling in both of you. “Listen, I ain’t here for a lecture. I’m getting you where you need to go and that’s it.”

“So I’m just cargo?” You chew on your bottom lip. “Pull the car over.”

“What?”

“I said pull the fucking car over, Joel, or so help me I’ll pull it over myself.”

He contemplates your words for a few seconds before pulling off onto the side of the highway. When the truck comes to a complete stop you grab your backpack and get out, walking along the road.

“The hell d’you think you’re doing?”

You don’t bother turning around. “What does it look like?”

“You’re being a goddamn child.”

“And you’re being a goddamn asshole!” You finally turn around, your face hot with rage.

“What’d you think? We’d become best friends? Bond or some shit? This is a job.”

“Well, it’s good to know what you think of me.”

“What d’you want from me?”

“Some respect, for a start! I’m not some naive kid and you’ve gotta stop treating me like one. I get that you want your ration cards, but that all depends on if I cooperate and right now I really don’t fucking feel like it.”

He lets you walk some distance, catching up to you when you’ve found a bridge to sit on, your legs dangling off the side. The sun is setting on the horizon and it’s absolutely breathtaking. He sits down next to you and lets out a breath of air.

You both just sit in silence for a while and you’re wondering why he hasn’t started lecturing at you yet about how you’re irresponsible and childish and unbearable, but he almost seems content to just watch the sunset with you.

And now you just feel so fucking stupid.

You reach into your backpack and pull out the sealed envelope, handing it over to him. “Here. Take this.”

He holds it in his hands. “What is it?”

“My dad told me to give it to you when we got to New York to prove I got there alive. Take it.”

He tilts his head. “Y/N-”

“This isn’t working.” You gestured between the both of you. “And I have a feeling we can’t make it to New York together so just – just take this and head back.”

“And you’re just gonna get there by yourself?” His voice isn’t as sharp as his meaning.

“It doesn’t matter. I just wanna be done with this. Tell Tommy my dad was right about you.”

You do nothing as Joel opens the envelope, pulling out a piece of paper with some writing on it. He doesn’t move. He just stares at the paper, his knuckles white as he grasps it so hard you’re surprised it hasn’t ripped.

Eventually he folds it back up and sighs deeply, sticking it back in the envelope and handing it to you.

“I made a promise,” he says. “I ain’t breaking this one.” When he gets up and you don’t, he turns back. “You coming or what?”

The prospect of returning the car with Joel isn’t exactly inviting, but with no other way to get up the coast, you decide it’s better to use him for as long as you can. As you follow him back you slip out the paper and read its message for yourself.

_Don’t let her be my Sarah._

* * *

 

While the aggressive tension is gone, a severe awkwardness has taken its place. You’re not sure which you hate more.

You spend a lot of time coming up with stories of who Sarah is. Maybe a wife? A girlfriend? A daughter? A mother? Each one humanizes him in a way that starts breaking your heart and you realize that the Joel who killed those families in Memphis might have once had a family of his own.

You know the feeling a little bit. The only person that remains of your own family is your father. The rest – you don’t like to think about it. Maybe you and Joel share common trauma. You desperately want to ask him about it, but every time the words almost slip out, you remember how closed off he is.

When you’re ambushed by hunters and they take everything in the truck, you realize what desperation can really do.

They capture you while Joel is still fighting them off. He calls out for you, but the stock of a rifle is smacked into the side of your head. By the time you wake up you’re strapped to a chair with a man in front of you, a knife in his hand.

“I want your boyfriend to hear you scream.”

After an hour you pretend to pass out from the pain and the man lets his guard down enough for you to kick him where the sun don’t shine. He drops the knife and you imprison it under your boot. He curses at you and calls you names but adrenaline is pumping through your body and you bite his arm when he tries to choke you. It isn’t the first time you’ve tasted someone else’s blood.

Injured and panicked, the man retreats and you manage to get the knife in your hands and you cut away at the ropes until you’re free.

You’ve never enjoyed killing, but there’s a bit of satisfaction residing in the pit of your stomach as you hunt down the hunters in their territory. You slice their throats and their tendons and stab them in the chest as many times as you can. You find Joel in an abandoned police station where he’s stuck in a cell. He gives you a once over and you realize you’re covered head to toe in blood that isn’t yours. After you retrieve the key you get him out of there before taking off in the truck while some more hunters shoot at you.

After two hours of driving it seems like you’ve definitely lost them, but there’s still a bit of paranoia in you that if you stop, those hunters will finally catch up and slaughter you both. When the sun goes down and Joel pulls over, you insist on taking the wheel.

“We need to rest,” he tells you.

“We need to keep going.”

For some strange reason he doesn’t argue with you. Instead he grunts and takes the passenger seat, using his backpack as a pillow against the window.

You drive until morning when you run out of gas. While Joel tries to syphon some out of abandoned cars, you sit on the hood of the truck twirling your knife between your fingers.

“Y/N!”

Joel’s shout startles you and you drop the knife. There’s a _cling_ when it hits the ground.

“What?” you call back.

“I need your help with this.”

Your heart starts to slow down and you pick up the knife, placing it back on your belt. You find Joel trying to move a car out of the way.

“What do you need me to do?” you ask.

“I need you to man the wheel. We’ll never get through with this rusted piece of shit in the way.”

You do as he asks, turning the wheel while you both push. It takes a lot of effort, but eventually the car is off to the side of the road and there’s enough space for the truck to get through.

Joel picks up the gas container. Sloshing comes from inside. You wonder how long it will be until there’s no more gasoline left in the world.

By nightfall you feel comfortable enough to stop for some actual rest in a ranch house. You clear out the infected and move the bodies into the backyard before spreading yourself out on the couch.

“What’re you doing?”

Joel appears upside down from your point of view. He’s holding a rifle he found in the basement which he then places against the wall.

“I’m…laying here?”

“We gotta barricade the door.”

“Just give me one minute.”

Joel sighs and goes to find stuff to put in front of the door by himself. You stare up at the ceiling like there’s something to actually see. Traveling is slowly becoming a burden and part of you is ready to just call it quits. Maybe you can just stay in the ranch house, making fix it up a bit. You’re no HGTV expert, but you can probably figure something out. Hey, maybe you can even do the other houses in the neighborhood, make some sort of settlement yourself.

Of course Joel won’t stay. He’s got his brother and all those ration cards waiting for them. But you can’t say you don’t like the idea of the two of you staying in this house, working together like you have been since Tallahassee.

He finishes before you finally get up off the couch. He looks like he wants to say something, but you head to the bathroom and close the door. You barely recognize yourself in the mirror. You’re still bloody, but you’d wiped most of it off. There’s dark bags under your eyes and you swear there’s actual wrinkles settling on your face.

When you return Joel is at the window, rifle in his hands. You suppose it’s his way of saying he’s taking first watch.

You sit down on the couch, elbows resting on your knees. Somehow the words just come out of your mouth.

“I killed my mom.”

Joel doesn’t say anything, but he shifts his gaze to you before turning his attention back out the window. But he’s listening. That much you’re sure.

“She wasn’t even infected, but she thought I was. I’d caught the flu and she became convinced I was bit. She told everyone in the bunker that I was going to rip them all apart if they didn’t kill me.”

There’s a change in his expression. Is it pity? You’re not sure what pity looks like on him. But his eyes are softer than usual and you take that as a good sign.

“What’s so weird is that she loved me. She really did.” The backs of your eyes start to burn and you stare up at the ceiling. “But the isolation – I think it did something to her. She came at me with a gun and I didn’t know what to do. I tried to stop her but she just kept coming and coming and I-” You can’t finish, your throat burning and your head hot with memories you wanted to repress. “Everything went downhill after that. She’d been the one holding everything together. Everyone wanted to kick me out. I was a murderer. So my dad he – he took care of it.”

You can see him putting the pieces together like it’s a puzzle.

“We ended up leaving because we couldn’t take the memories anymore. Just-” You flatten your hand and move it forward. “We just kept going until we got desperate.”

What you really mean is “we joined a group of hunters so that we wouldn’t be hunted down ourselves” but what you actually say sounds a lot better.

“I just want you to know that I’m not some ditzy damsel in distress who’s never taken an innocent life before. I just know that cruelty gets everyone killed in the end.”

He seems to weight your words, but he doesn’t respond. Maybe you made some kind of impact on him or something. You don’t know. Joel appears pretty set in his ways. No wonder Tommy trusted him to get you to New York alive.

“Can we just promise to not repeat Memphis? You can do whatever you want once we’ve gotten to New York, but until then let’s only kill people that deserve it.”

 “I can’t guarantee nothing.”

“Please, just…try.”

He pauses. “Whatever keeps you from running off.”


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your comments and kudos!
> 
> chapter warnings: swearing, violence

Joel’s new promise is put to the test a week later when another settlement lets you stay with them. They’re led by an old woman named Daisy who loves wearing ugly Christmas sweaters even though it’s not Christmas anymore.

“I think we should stay here for a few days,” you say.

You and Joel are given a recently vacated apartment to stay in and judging by the bloodstain underneath the bed you have a feeling why that is.

It’s strange to be sitting with him at a kitchen table eating an actual meal like you’re some sort of married couple at the end of the day, talking about your jobs. While you like the domesticity, it seems to make Joel antsy.

“We can’t stay long,” he says.

“We need a break, Joel. We’ve been traveling for months and we’re tired. It won’t hurt to just take a few days to regenerate, alright?”

You spend the next day planning out your route which includes plans A through fucking Z in case things don’t pan out which seems to happen quite often.

“I’m gonna go take a walk,” you say once you’re satisfied.

“That’s not a good idea.”

You frown at Joel who is now sprawled out on the couch where he slept last night, insisting that you take the bed. You have a feeling he just wanted to be close to the door.

“It’s just a walk. Chill.”

He huffs and you leave.

You find Daisy in the greenhouse, tending to her plants. The winter has been harsh on the community, she tells you, but the greenhouse keeps things going even in the colder months.

“Is he your husband?” she asks.

You can’t help but laugh. “No, not at all. We’re just traveling together.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” She must have noticed the startled look on your face. “People who are just traveling together don’t look at each other the way you two do.”

Of course you’ve come to care of him in some way. It’s all too complicated for you to fully understand it. You’ve saved his life, he’s saved yours. There’s not exactly a word for that. But you definitely know you’d go to great lengths to help him and it can’t just be because he’s your ticket to New York.

Joel helps out by going to a nearby town with some of the others and you’re a nervous wreck until they all come back alive. Daisy thinks you’re worried for Joel’s safety, but you’re more worried about the people he’s with.

They all come back later than expected and when you’re satisfied that no one is missing, you retreat to the apartment and get ready for bed. Joel comes in and places his backpack on the kitchen table.

“Don’t look so surprised.”

You walk past him to close the blinds. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You thought I was gonna kill all of them.”

“It’s not like you’ve done anything to make me think otherwise.”

Is he upset about the implication? It’s hard to tell.

“What I do is to keep us alive.”

“I know. And believe me, I’m thankful for you saving my life. I just don’t want it to be at the cost of your humanity.”

He seems to contemplate what you say, but doesn’t respond.

Later that night in the apartment you’re bored out your mind while Joel is sleeping. It’s hard to sleep at the same time, even with town guards patrolling the streets outside. It becomes your turn to get antsy as you try to find some place to get comfortable.

“Would you just sit down?” Joel’s voice is deep and scratchy. He keeps his eyes closed as you glance at him.

“I can’t sleep.”

He grunts and turns over on his side. Why the man won’t just take the bed is beyond you.

“You can’t sleep either.”

“That’s because you won’t sit down.” His voice is somewhat muffled.

You huff and cross your arms taking a place at the front window. There’s a nice little ledge in front of it with a couple of small pillows that you use for a more comfortable seat. Past the blinds you spot some guards moving around, assault rifles in their hands. It feels more like a prison than a community.

You fidget with your hands as anxiety starts to overwhelm you for reasons unknown. Your heart is racing and your neck is all sweaty, dampening the short hair at the base of your head. Your hands start to shake like you’re going through some sort of withdrawal. What the fuck?

It doesn’t take long for you to get up again, but this time you head for the bedroom and close the door, switching the lock in the doorknob. You slide down, your back pressed against the door, your hands still shaking. You’re afraid your legs will give out if you stand up. Is it normal to hear your pulse in your ears?

At some point you fall asleep on the floor and you’re awoken by Joel’s voice on the other side of the door.

“Y/N, you alright?” He tries the doorknob and sighs when it won’t budge.

“I’m fine,” you say. “Just – give me a minute.”

There’s a mirror above a dresser and you take a look at yourself. You’ve calmed down at least, the sweat having dried up and your heart returning to normal. But you still look like shit from sleeping on the floor all night when a perfectly good bed was two feet away from you.

Joel doesn’t say anything when you unlock the door and open it and watches you as you stride past him, grabbing your things to go out and help Daisy in the gardens again.

The sun is hot on your back and suddenly you’re back in Tallahassee, sitting on the edge of a rooftop and knowing your future is even more uncertain than it was before.

When you start crying Daisy pulls you into a hug and the dam breaks. It takes a good fifteen minutes for you to go from sobbing to hiccupping and you apologize when you realize you’ve left a large wet spot on her sweater.

“Is there something you want to talk about?” she asks.

You wipe at your eyes with your sleeves and sniff. Your nose is so stuffed that it’s impossible to breath. “I don’t think you want my whole life story.”

“Well, then I’ll tell you mine.”

It turns out Daisy used to be a grade school teacher and she was good at it. She had a husband she loved and two children she would die for. When the outbreak hit she had to shoot her husband to survive and she never saw her kids again.

It doesn’t make you feel any better, but you have a feeling that’s not what she intended anyway.

“My point is,” she says, “that we all have hardships, especially now. But we can’t let them hold us back.”

_Try telling that to Joel._

“It’s just so hard sometimes,” you say. “I just want to go back to the way things were.”

“You can’t. And you won’t be able to move on until you accept it.”

Again you end up back in the apartment that night, but Joel isn’t there. You wait for him until you’re so hungry that you eat your dinner without him. You fall asleep on the window ledge, your head pressed against the wall where you had been watching out the window for him. A noise wakes you up and you see Joel moving around in the dark, cursing under his breath.

“Joel?”

You hear him sigh and he comes over, though he keeps himself mostly in the shadows.

“Go to bed, Y/N.”

He doesn’t sound right. You flick on the light switch and gasp.

At first you see the blood on him and think he’s gone back on his word, but then you notice the gash on his arm, a makeshift tourniquet keeping him from bleeding out. There’s a cut over his eyebrow and a bruise starting to swell under his eye.

“Jesus Christ, what happened?”

“Nothing happened.” He doesn’t sound angry but he’s certainly upset.

“Have you been looked at?”

“I’m fine.”

“No you’re not. Sit down.”

“Y/N-”

“I said sit down.”

It must be the exhaustion that makes him listen. He plops down on the couch and you pull out the first aid kit from under the sink. There’s not many supplies left, but you find some disinfectant that you use on the cut over his eyebrow. He flinches, but says nothing as you clean out the wound before bandaging it up.

“You’re not…” You trail off, not wanting to say it out loud.

“I’m clean,” he says.

You let out a breath of relief. You don’t know what’s worse: Joel dying or Joel turning. For a brief moment you imagine him, rabid and out of control. Could you pull the trigger if you’re looking into his eyes?

“You want to tell me what happened now?”

“Hunters. Found us in the town.”

“You did the right thing.”

He doesn’t answer.

“Thank you,” you say.

“For what?”

“For keeping your promise.” You’ve finished with what you can do and get up off the couch. “You should really take the bed.”

He stretches out on the couch, placing his arm behind his head. “I’m good.”

You wait a few moments, but ultimately crawl into the bed.

* * *

You wake up to gunfire.

The hunters, it turns out, followed everyone back and let loose on the town. Joel is already out the door before you. Instead of joining the fighting you go straight to Daisy’s apartment to find that the door has been kicked in. A trail of blood goes from the kitchen to the bathroom and you find her with a bullet wound in her stomach, desperately trying to stay awake.

You make eye contact and go into medic mode, pulling out her first aid kit and trying to find something to help – _anything_ to help.

“Don’t,” she says, her voice weak.

“You’re going to be okay.” The panic is coming back. _I can’t let her die, I can’t let her die._

She places a weak hand on yours. “Don’t.”

“You’ll die.”

“We all…have to die…sometime.” She attempts a smile. “Stay with me?”

You nod and hold her hand. “Tell me about your husband.”

The nostalgia makes her laugh, or maybe it’s the blood loss. “He wasn’t much different than your Joel.”

 _Your Joel_.

“He was brave and strong. He would’ve…done anything for me. I’m going to see him…again.”

Her breathing becomes more labored and shortly after her eyes close and her hand goes limp.

And that’s how Joel finds you an hour later, still with Daisy’s body like she might just wake up.

“Time to go,” he says.

When you just sit there he grabs you under your arms and lifts you up. You don’t even protest.

It turns out at least half the town is dead, though all the hunters have been killed. Joel takes you through the main street to the car lot where he’s already got the key to a sedan. He throws your things in the back and guides you into the passenger seat before driving off, leaving the town behind.

That night you dream of Daisy’s garden.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: swearing, violence

It takes four days to get to Jackson and by then you’re back to normal – or at least whatever your new normal is. You decide to take a lesson from Joel’s book and not let your grief over Daisy and the town to follow you. It makes things a little easier, but that pain is still there, just hidden away now.

When you arrive in the city you find that city hall is under the control of people who lure in infected to use as a barrier.

“They ain’t hunters,” Joel says, looking through some binoculars he found.

“So then we’ve got nothing to worry about,” you say.

“Let’s just keep our distance.”

You set up camp downtown in an antique store, but you spot a book shop not far away. God, would you love to go and get some new books. You don’t even have any with you anymore, having been forced to abandon them long ago. The car rides have become nearly unbearable without anything to do.

If Joel were to, oh, maybe hold a conversation for more than two minutes, maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. But he’s also so tight lipped, especially when driving.

“We should play a game,” you say.

He cocks an eyebrow in your direction from where he’s counting his bullets. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“Oh, come on! It’ll be fun. We’ll just…we’ll ask each other questions and if we don’t wanna answer we pass.”

He contemplates before he says, “What’re the stakes?”

“There aren’t any.”

“Then where’s the fun in that?”

“So you want some sort of challenge? Alright, uh…” You think for a moment. What’s the least intimate thing you could do? The first option that comes to mind is stripping for passing a question, but you’re not sure if you want Joel to see you in your bra or if you’re mentally ready to have your questions answered about his body. Of course you could make a deal with him, like if he passes he has to give you something and vice versa. But neither of you had much to your names. Then an idea pops in your head. “Oh, I got it! We’ll each get three passes and if you have to read a book of the others choice.”

You have a feeling even if he used up the three passes he still wouldn’t go by the rules, but you like the somewhat playful Joel you’ve managed to bring out and it’d be a shame to lose him too fast.

“Sounds reasonable.” He scratches his beard like he’s concocting some sort of plan to make sure you read something absolutely horrible. You can’t imagine what kind of books the man would read, even if he read at all. Maybe history books? Aren’t southern guys into that? You wouldn’t know. Or maybe he secretly has a thing for harlequin romance to which you’ll have to end your relationship immediately.

“I’ll go first,” you say. “Ask me a question.”

He thinks for a while before finally saying, “What’s your favorite color?”

It’s so simple and easy and you’re wondering if maybe all your questions should stay that way. Just little tidbits here and there. But you’re done being the only one to bare your soul.

You tell him your favorite color and ask him, “What’s yours?”

“Blue.” Huh. You didn’t really know what to expect, you suppose.

“What’s something you wish we still had?”

“Germ-X. No doubt.”

The corners of his lips twitch. “You a germaphobe?”

“Laugh all you want, but you kind of have to be when there’s infected people trying to rip you apart. How about you?”

“I ain’t afraid of germs.”

“No, the question. What’s something you wish we still had?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Coffee.”

“Coffee?”

“What?”

“I can’t imagine you drinking coffee.”

“Had it every day.”

“Damn. You must have had quite the caffeine addiction.”

“Cold turkey was a bitch.”

He uses his passes pretty quickly. One is on “How old were you when you lost your virginity?” Another is on “What’s your most embarrassing memory?” After the last one is used, you finally decide to spring the question on your mind.

“Who’s Sarah?”

The question falls like a bomb and suddenly Joel is closed off again. Tension coats the room and despite the discomfort, you stick to your guns.

“You waited until all three passes were up.” He doesn’t sound accusatory or even pissed, but he certainly doesn’t sound happy. Betrayed? Join the fucking club.

“Listen, Joel, I’ve told you a lot about me. It’s only fair you do the same.”

He gets to his feet and now _you’re_ the one that’s frustrated.

“Come on, Joel. This is ridiculous.”

“I ain’t doing this, Y/N. I never asked about your past.”

“Exactly! We shouldn’t have to ask.”

“No, we should be keeping our business to ourselves.”

He moves to leave the room.

“Y’know, every time I think we’re getting somewhere, you pull some shit like this.”

This makes him stop. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not special, Joel. Whoever Sarah is, I’m guessing you lost her and it hurt pretty fucking bad. But guess what? Everyone in this world has lost someone.” Your common sense tells you to stop before you say something you’ll regret. “Believe it or not, we all know how it feels. That doesn’t give you a right to treat others like shit.”

His voice goes cold and you swear the temperature drops a few degrees. “Don’t use Sarah like that.”

“Like what? As a good goddamn point?” Now you’re standing, fury bubbling inside you.   
You know what, why don’t I tell you everything about me? I was born and raised in New York, I had a husband who I loved very much but he was a shitty guy who did shitty things and he never really loved me. I was stuck in a loveless marriage for years and then comes the outbreak. You know what he did? He abandoned me. We were out on the street when it happened. I ended up breaking my goddamn knee and never got to see a proper doctor and now it’s fucked up and I’m too scared to try and fix it. And now I’m stuck with a jackass with the emotional range of a brick who keeps making me think he’s not really that bad only to prove me wrong every fucking time.”

You head for another room, stopping in the doorway.

“Listen, I’m not asking you to be my friend. I’m asking you to be _human_. I don’t know if you’ve forgotten how after all these years, but I sure as hell haven’t. I’m sick and fucking tired of doing this dance with you. We gotta at least be able to work as a team.”

He doesn’t say anything after this and you don’t even give yourself hope that you’ve gotten through to him. He’s just like every other stubborn man out there and you’re starting to think that maybe you should just accept it.

* * *

It turns out the people in city hall don’t just use the infected as a barrier. They use them as a weapon.

You’re woken up by music loud enough to shake the floor. “The fuck?”

You look to Joel who is already peeking out onto the street. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“What is it?”

He moves over and you take a look.

Shit, shit, _shit_.

The entire street is covered with infected. It’s mostly runners, but there’s a few clickers in there too. You can hear their noises through the wall sending a shiver up your spine.

“What do we do?” you ask.

“We stay put.”

“We can’t wait them out, there’s too many of them.”

“Well, we can’t kill them either.”

“Dammit.” Your eyes gaze down the street where there’s less of them. “I could draw them away.”

“No, it’s too risky.”

“We can’t just sit here, Joel. One wrong move and they’ll tear this place down.”

But you know deep down you’ve got no other option. Even if you had enough bullets, you wouldn’t be fast enough to keep a safe distance between you and the infected. So instead you take refuge on the top floor, the weather too cold for you to stay on the roof. Besides, Joel fears there may be snipers.

It’s a tense evening with neither of you getting much sleep, the clicking from outside seemingly endless. You’ve been tortured and shot and stabbed, but nothing seems to unnerve you like the unknown.

You glance out the window every so often, the moonlight being the only thing allowing you to see the hoard outside.

When morning arrives there’s still infected out there, but at least a third of them have wandered off.

“We should stay another day,” says Joel. “Maybe more of them will leave.”

“Now you’re the one being risky.”

“Look, dying of starvation or thirst takes a lot longer than being ripped apart.”

You blow air out your nose and sit underneath the window. Hiding up here is incredibly boring and the tension certainly isn’t helping. If you and Joel were on better terms maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but instead the stress is stifling and he starts getting antsy by noon.

You take to daydreaming for some form of entertainment, making up stories in your head to escape from the reality around you. It gets a little grating after a while, but it’s still something. You lay on your back, your backpack as a pillow, as you stare up at the ceiling.

Eventually your mind goes into a territory you’re not prepared for and you’re wondering what life would be like if you and Joel had known each other before the outbreak. There’s little bits and pieces of a younger Joel that shines through the cracks in his armor every now and then, but it’s not enough for you to connect the dots.

For some God awful reason you start imagining living him, spending nights watching TV and going to bed when you can barely keep your eyes open. You wonder if he’s a big spoon or a little spoon or if maybe he likes being both. Joel…cuddling? Unimaginable. Unbelievable. But maybe it’s that little bit of mystery that keeps you coming back to this alternate universe throughout the day.

It’s a bad idea and you know it. Joel isn’t your friend and he certainly isn’t your _boyfriend._ He’s an ally and that’s it. It just doesn’t help that you’re realizing how lonely you are and he’s got a nice face.

Morning comes again and the majority of the infected have left the area, though they’re likely scattered throughout the city. It still makes traveling a risk unless you’re careful.

Joel agrees it’s time to set out and you both make an effort to be as quiet as possible, sticking to buildings as a way to avoid any potential living people out there wanting to draw some blood. There’s a couple of close calls, but you’ve got each other’s backs and you get out of Jackson by late afternoon.

When you’ve put enough distance between you and the city, you stop for a break, your knee burning from all the crouching. You massage it fruitlessly, as if the pain would instantly go away. You know from experience it won’t.

“I guess we’re a couple of lucky sons of bitches, huh?” you say lightly, noticing the grim look on Joel’s face as he goes through his backpack.

He grunts in response and you roll your eyes.

“We should keep moving,” he says. “Don’t know how far they’ll be willing to travel.”

“Yeah.” You stand, stretching your arms behind your back.

Joel starts to walk away, but then stops.

“Sarah was my daughter.”

His voice is…quiet. Not soft. Not gentle. Just…quiet. Like it’s a different Joel from a different time and you’re reaching through a wormhole to hear him.

“She died the night of the outbreak,” he continues. “She bled out in my arms.” His voice cracks and he keeps his focus on the ground.

“I’m so sorry,” is all you can say.

A daughter. It’d been on your list of possibilities, but to actually know it – you don’t know what to do about it. There was a Joel that existed before the outbreak and he’d been a father and he must have loved his daughter by the way he won’t meet your eyes. Are they glistening? He swallows hard and clenches one hand into a fist.

As much as it breaks your heart to hear it, you’re just so _relieved_ that he finally listened to you. You’re relieved that he’s actually human underneath the blood and dirt.

“I can’t imagine what that must feel like,” you say. You’re not sure if you should even continue talking, but it’s your coping mechanism dammit and he just keeps letting his admission hang in the air.

It must all still be so fresh to him. The outbreak was...seven years ago? Right, it was seven the past September.

“How old was she?”

“Twelve.”

“Jesus. God, I’m – I’m sorry, Joel.”

She would be nineteen if she was still alive. It’s hard to imagine the Joel with you now traveling with a nineteen year old daughter. But then again, if she was still alive, you certainly wouldn’t be on the outskirts of Jackson with him. You would’ve never met him or even Tommy for that matter. You’d still be stuck in that hunter camp. Maybe you’d even be dead.

“See?” you say, nudging his side with your elbow. “Talking didn’t kill you.”

He rubs the spot where you touched him. “Kinda wish it had.”

“Maybe if you talked about things more, you wouldn’t be such a tight ass.”

“And maybe if you talked about things less, you wouldn’t be such a smartass.”

“Touché.”

The tension is somewhat alleviated and you can tell Joel is grateful for that.

“The next time we play a game,” he says, “it’s gonna involve cards.”


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: language, violence

Naturally you end up sick.

There are no words to describe how much you hate being so vulnerable in front of Joel. It’s different than baring your soul because at least you have control over that. Instead you’re at his mercy while you cough up a lung and feel like your face is burning off.

At least Joel is…kind. He doesn’t exactly comfort you in the way you’d hoped, but it’s still better than nothing. He seems to be a bit of an expert and you can only assume how many times he had to take care of a sick daughter. The image of him getting her Tylenol and an ice pack warms your heart.

He sits with you when you ask him to and covers you up when you fall asleep which you do in the middle of conversations.

You’re hold up in a two story house that still has a nice bed and you wish Joel would lay on it with you. You’re too scared to ask, even at your worst, just in case he thinks you’re coming on to him. Maybe you are a little. You’re still not exactly sure how you feel about him, but when you get the chills you know you need his warm body next to you.

When you finally do ask he seems awkward and hesitant about it, like he’s stepping over a line. But you must look so miserable with your fever and your sore throat and your runny nose that he finally crawls onto the bed and lets you get close to him. Your head is so fuzzy and painful that you barely register that it’s his chest that’s under you, his heart beating steadily beneath your ear. It’s fast and strong and you fall asleep to its rhythm.

You dream about being woken up by a twelve year old girl who’s excited to have a mom again and a much younger Joel that’s just happy to see a smile on his daughter’s face.

When you wake up in the real world Joel is gone and you’re feeling a little better so you wander down the stairs and find him fast asleep on the couch.

“Weren’t you supposed to be on watch?” Your voice is distorted from your stuff up nose and you cringe at the sound.

He’s startled and his hand is on his gun, but when he realizes it’s just you he puts it back.

“Don’t scare me like that,” he says, rubbing his chest over his heart.

“Didn’t know you could get scared.”

“You should be resting.” Typical deflection.

“I’m tired of resting. I can’t even remember what day it is.”

“We never know what day it is.”

“I do. I keep a calendar, remember?”

He frowns. “Since when?”

“What? How do you think I knew it was New Year’s?”

“I thought you were making that up.”

“Jesus, okay.” You grab your backpack and pull out the journal you’ve been working on, flipping to page you’d been keep track of the days. “I’ve got a calendar that I make every year. How many days has it been since we got here?”

“Three.”

“Okay.” You cross out the days you were out of it and close the journal. “That’s a weight off my shoulders.”

“You’re weird, you know that?”

“And _you’re_ not, Mister Stereotypical Tough Guy? You know, I’ve got a lot of insults locked and loaded.”

“All I did was call you weird. Relax.”

“I’m relaxed. I am _so_ relaxed.”

“Mhmm.”

You find you like this kind of banter with him. Instead of insulting each other out of anger you’re insulted each other out of fondness. Progress.

You sit back, sinking into the couch. It’s now that you’ve been able to properly take in your surroundings.

“That is some ugly ass wallpaper,” you note. “I bet an old lady lived here.”

“It’s vintage.” He almost seems offended.

“Vintage?” You can’t help the laugh that escapes your lips. “Vintage _wallpaper_? Good God. Remind me to never renovate a house with you.”

“My wife said the same thing.”

Your heart stops and you watch him carefully out of the corner of your eye. At first he doesn’t seem to realize what he said, but then it dawns on him and he clear his throat and gets up off the couch.

“If you’re feeling better then we should get moving.” He’s back to regular old Joel and you chew thoughtfully on your bottom lip.

It’s the first time he’s ever mentioned a wife. You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t thought about it. He had a daughter – she had to come from somewhere.

But it’s just one more thing that makes him more human and you _hate_ it. Part of you actually prefers him to how he was when you started traveling. Now he’s in this weird in between where you know the person he is now, but you also know the person he used to be and there’s an uncomfortable disconnect.

Really you just wish you’d known him before the outbreak – loving father, husband, brother. Whatever job he had. That part you don’t know yet. Living in Austin, Texas. You list off all the other things you know about past Joel and it’s almost hard to believe it’s the same person.

But then again, you’ve changed a lot too.

* * *

You end up in a church as a snowstorm blows over. Joel starts burning bibles to keep you both warm and you feel a little weird about it, but you figure any higher power would forgive you. Or at least you hope so.

Joel’s been relatively silent since the wife comment, so you try to fill the silence with your own rambling. Half the time he isn’t listening, but you don’t mind. Neither of you bother taking watch – the storm is too dangerous for even the most daredevil hunters to trek through. Or at least that’s what Joel tell you.

You prod a little bit, trying to ask questions about his hunter lifestyle, but it hits a nerve and he tells you to go to sleep. Instead you head upstairs to wander around and he sighs loudly as you leave.

* * *

The storm is over by morning and you set out again, but the snow is several feet high and neither of you are prepared for it.

“We’ll stay here for a while,” he tells you. “Don’t wanna drown in the snow.”

You have enough supplies to last you a few days, but those few days go by fast and soon you’ve been cooped up in the church for a week after another storm comes through.

At least water comes by easy. With so much snow out there you and Joel bring it in to melt. It’s not a lot but it keeps you alive. However, it’s the food you’re worried about. You scrounged up some nonperishables hidden away in the basement kitchen which you both eat sparingly, but if the storm goes on any longer there won’t be anything left. While your stomach has certainly shrank over the years of eating so little at a time, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re positively _starving_ and you won’t be any use if you’re shaking from low blood sugar.

You find Joel keeping the fire going, having turned to burning the pews after all the bibles were used up. He throws another piece of wood onto the fire and it crackles.

“Well, I think we’re going to die of starvation,” you say.

“Yeah, I got that feeling too.”

“That sucks. Of all the things to die of I don’t want it to be going hungry.” When he gives you a questioning look you add, “I mean, we’ve all gotta die sometime. I want it be cool or something. Like sacrificing myself for the greater good or shielding a loved one. That kind of thing.”

He laughs humorlessly. “I think we should be focusing on not dying at all.”

“It’s a good idea in theory. But it’ll happen someday.”

Joel turns away and loses himself in thought.

That’s when you heard the crash.

“What was that?” you whisper.

Joel says nothing but he’s switched into fight mode, the safety on his revolver clicking off.

“Stay here,” he tells you, getting up off the floor.

You scoff, following him. “As if.”

He rolls his eyes but he’s learned by now that you won’t listen to him if you don’t want to.

You split up and in hindsight it was a really shitty idea.

Joel goes up to the top floor while you investigate the nave and all the doors that lead off from it. You stumble upon the pastor’s office (pastors had offices?) and found all the bells covered in dust and cobwebs.

There’s another _BANG_ and it’s closer this time. Afterwards you hear thumping and for a moment you think a T-Rex is coming your way and you duck down just in time to see your opponent.

Goddammit, it’s a fucking bloater. _Shit._

You’ve heard of them before, but you thought it was just rumors. There were three stages of infection – runner, stalker, clicker. You’ve encountered many of each before. But bloater? It had to take years upon years upon _years_ for this shit to happen.

God, it’s fucking gross to look at. It’s got the face of a clicker, like its head exploded from the fungus inside. There’s thick skin over its body like armor with stuff growing out of it. It’s smaller than you imagined, but you figure it’s still in some sort of transformation process. It’ll probably be bigger the longer it lives. Jesus, you hope you never see one that’s full grown.

Of course now you’re left with very few options. Try to kill it? Bad idea. Clickers are strong enough to rip your jaw apart, God knows what fucking bloaters can do. Run? Better idea. You could go find Joel, get the fuck out of there. Maybe leave a sign so that no one else gets stuck where you are. Wait? Might work. But Joel could end up finding the bloater and get himself killed which would be not good.

Run it is, then.

You take a few deep breaths, gearing yourself up before you get out of there. Fortunately the bloater still seems to have the same problem as clickers and doesn’t see you leave and you’re quiet enough that it doesn’t hear you.

You quickly run up the stairs, whisper-shouting, “Joel!” over and over again as you move along. You eventually find him in the bell tower holding a sniper rifle and aiming it downward.

“Joel, we-”

He shushes you and you shush him back out of spite. He puts a finger to his lips then points downward. You follow his finger to where two men are scoping out the place, assault rifles in their hands. They look up at the windows and one of them tries the door.

“Locked,” he says with a southern drawl that’s not as pleasing to the ear as Joel’s. “Let’s try the back.”

When they’re out of sight Joel crouches down and you kneel in front of him.

“Joel, there’s a bloater.”

“A what?”

“A bloater.”

He shakes his head. “They ain’t real.”

“They’re fucking real and I just saw one.”

Joel thinks for a moment before slinging the sniper over his shoulder and moving back toward the stairs.

“Where are you going?” you ask.

“We’re leaving.”

“What? If those guys come in here they’ll die.”

“And if we stay we’ll die.”

“So you believe me then? About the bloater?”

He doesn’t say anything.

Your stubbornness rears its ugly head and you don’t even know what you’re saying until you’ve said it. “Fine, I’ll go kill it myself.”

“Y/N-”

“We can’t just leave it. It’ll kill a shit ton of people and just keep getting stronger. If it’s been infected longer than a clicker then we’re even doing it a mercy.”

“We don’t have the supplies. Y/N this isn’t our fight let’s just go while we can.”

“I’m not gonna run like a coward.”

He gets flustered now, his eyes narrowing in your direction. “We’re not cowards, we’re _survivors_. We’re not on this earth to save everyone else.”

“I’m not like you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve still got some humanity left and fuck, maybe you do too. But I’m not going to live my life only looking out for myself.”

You leave him as he calls your name again. He sounds more desperate now, but you don’t even care anymore.

Joel’s way of living sucks. It sucks so fucking bad and you won’t let yourself turn into him. Sure, he has his moments. He’s saved your life, he’s taken care of you. He’s opened up to you in ways you’re sure he hasn’t opened up to anyone since the outbreak. But he’s so obsessed with survival to the point where you’re wondering if it’s some sort of coping mechanism, a way for him to keep going so he doesn’t end up killing himself. But that’s just no you.

Or at least you hope.

You’ve got five bullets in your gun. You’ve been running low on ammo for months and without going into what’s left of a zone there isn’t much to pick from. You refuse to let go of the gun you’ve had since Tallahassee, but you’ve put it on the backburner and used the guns you’ve picked up from hunters and long dead corpses. But no you’ve got such little ammo that you realize Joel is right. You don’t have the supplies to take on a bloater. The hell were you thinking?

You continue on anyway, unable to admit you’re wrong. Maybe you’re more flawed than you realized.

The bloater is still where you left it, just standing there. It’s not close enough to a window to push it out and there’s nothing sharp enough to stab it with other than your knife and there’s no way in hell you’ll try that.

Then you think of it. _The fire_. If you could set it on fire that would definitely kill it. Or at least you hope so.

“Hey, you ugly motherfucker!” you yell. You get its attention quickly and it starts waddling toward you, its footsteps shaking the floor and the walls. “You want your meal you’ll have to work for it!”

You’re careful as you lead it back down to the fire, not getting too far away that it loses interest, but not getting too close that you risk getting caught. You still haven’t seen Joel reappear, but whatever. He can make his choices.

You stand on the other side of the fire, but the bloater doesn’t take the bait. Instead it maneuvers around the flames. _Dammit, dammit, shit!_ There has to be a way to force it.

There’ still half a pew that hasn’t been ripped apart. You run to the other side and push it into the bloaters extended stomach, encouraging it backward. The bottom of the pew is relatively quiet on the carpeted floor and it slide across easily, giving you enough force to knock the bloater onto the fire.

You stay back there behind the pew as it struggles on its back, drowning in the flames. Its arms and legs thrash around and for a moment it starts to get to its feet, but then it fall back down, consumed by the heat.

At last, it stops moving.

You realize then that you’re breathing heavily, a mix of exhaustion, starvation, and adrenaline. Joel suddenly bursts into the room, revolver drawn until he spots the dead bloater covering the fire he worked so hard to keep going.

“Shit,” he says.

“Thanks for the help,” you snark dryly.

He holsters his weapon while you go to inspect the bloater’s body.

“We gotta go.”

You glance up at him. “You were just gonna let those people die.”

“And those people are going to be in here any moment so we _gotta go_.” He grabs your arm and you yank it away.

“No! I’m tired of running.”

“We are _not_ dying here.”

“You’re right, we’re not.” You straighten, going for the front door where you move the blockade enough to open the door. However the moment you open it you’re greeted with a fist in your face and a cracking nose.

You fall backward, your hands managing to keep you from splitting your head open on the floor. One of your hands goes to your nose where it’s in excruciating pain. There’s shouting, the click of a gun’s safety, footsteps. When you recover enough to look around you find Joel pointing his gun at the two men from earlier, threatening to shoot.

To your surprise he doesn’t just pull the trigger.

The two men, one older with a trucker hat over his gray hair and one younger with at least three different coats on, hold their assault rifles out.

“Dad, wait,” says the younger one. He points the barrel of his gun to the dead bloater.

“Well shit,” says the older one. “We’ve been hunting this fucker down for weeks. Looks like you did our job for us.”

“You’re welcome,” you say, but your voice is extremely nasally. You pull your hand away from your nose to find blood. _Fan-fucking-tastic._

“Oh, uh, sorry about that,” says the younger one sheepishly. He glances at Joel before putting his rifle on his back. He carefully extends a hand to you, but you ignore him, coughing as you get to your feet.

“You sick?” asks the older one.

“She’s recovering,” says Joel. He’s still got his gun up, unlike the older one who has lowered his aim.  

“What kind of sick?”

You scoff. “It’s a cold, dumbass.”

The older man puts his hands up, putting away his weapon. “Hey, no need for name calling.”

“Then maybe you should give us your names,” you say.

“Alright. I’m Jeremiah. This here’s my son Gabe. And you are?”

You go back to Joel’s side and he slowly puts down the gun, though he doesn’t holster it. His eyes are glued to where your hand covers your nose. He reaches up, peeling way some of your fingers to get a good look at it but you hiss involuntarily at his touch.

“I’m Y/N,” you say. “He’s Joel.”

Joel frowns and you’re not sure what for, but he pulls away from you.

“Nice to meet you,” says Jeremiah. “Y’know we have some cold medicine that might help.”

“Got anything for a broken nose?”

“You know what? I think we do. Why don’t you come with us?”

Joel is hesitant. He grabs your arm before you can even think of moving forward.

“Come on, they broke my nose, they gotta fix it.”


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg thank you guys for the lovely comments, you all make my day <333
> 
> chapter warnings: language, violence

The town is actually a bunch of cabins on the edge of a forest with walls around it. It feels more like a camp than a settlement, but it’s kind of cozy.

Joel, of course, observes everything and everyone like a hawk. He doesn’t seem to want you out of his sight and it annoys you. You’re fine if he wants to start showing actual concern, but he really needs to learn boundaries.

“I was thinking about something,” you say as you walk into town.

“What’s that?” asks Joel.

“I’m an idiot.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything, but-”

“Would you shut up for one second? I was an idiot because I almost got myself killed. I got stubborn and I couldn’t admit I was wrong.”

The corners of his lips turn upwards. “I did warn you.”

“Don’t look so smug, jackass. You’ve got room for improvement too. What I’m trying to say is that we should try and be better people, you know? Have something to strive towards.” When he opens his mouth you stop him. “And don’t say anything about surviving. Obviously that’s the end goal, but I can’t live my life like this Joel.”

The pleasure he had disappears. “Once we get to New York you can live your life however you damn please.”

This puts a strain on your heart and you’re left wondering if Joel didn’t mean anything by it or if it’s some kind of jab toward you. When he walks off without you, you’re figure it’s probably the latter.

* * *

Gabe, despite being the one that broke your nose, is actually very sweet. He apologizes over and over again and you tell him that it’s fine, worse things have happened. The anger you had at first quickly subsides.

A doctor patches you up, giving you some cold medicine. Joel allows you to squeeze his hand as your nose is reset without any anesthetic. You nearly pass out from the pain, but it’s over quickly and you’re given a splint. The doctor suggests you stay in town for at least a week to make sure everything heals right and you decide it might be best.

“You could always have them look at your knee.”

Joel’s suggestion comes out of the blue as you’re helping some of the townspeople reorganize the food pantry.

“Resetting my nose was bad enough,” you tell him. “Besides, my knee isn’t that bad.”

He scoffs.

“What was that for?”

“You can barely walk for an hour without taking a break. You should have it looked at.”

“Okay, _mom_.”

“Hey, Y/N?”

You both turn your attention to Gabe who is running over. He has a smile on his face that falters when he sees the splint.

“Sorry.”

“You gotta stop apologizing,” you say. “What happened, happened.”

“Right.” He starts playing with his hands. “Well, uh, I was wondering if you wanted to help me with something.”

“She’s busy,” says Joel sharply.

You shoot him a dirty look before turning back to Gabe, giving him an overly cheery smile which makes Joel blow air out of his nose. “What d’you need help with?”

“We’re kinda running low on people to watch the kids. You think you can volunteer?”

“Beats heavy lifting. Maybe Joel can take over for me.” You plop a box of canned food into his arms and he grunts in surprise.

Joel has managed to bring out your spiteful side and you’re once again questioning why you even care about him. You leave Joel behind, following Gabe to what is designated as the town’s daycare center. There’s a shockingly large amount of children to watch over with only three adults doing the supervising.

“Never seen so many kids before?” asks Gabe.

You realize your mouth is hanging open and you quickly close it. “I just – I didn’t know that people were still having kids post outbreak. I mean, lots of kids.”

“Yeah, well, we kind of like to call this town the Ark. Like Noah’s Ark. We figure we can try and repopulate the earth or whatnot.”

Suddenly Gabe’s eyes on you make you relatively uncomfortable. Is he simply looking for someone to help him repopulate? Or are you reading everything wrong? Not that it really matters; once the splint is off, you and Joel will be out of there.

You assist Gabe and the other adults in rounding up the kids for story time. Since you’re the newcomer, you get the honor of telling a tale. Most of your recent tales are too bloody and scary for such little kids, so you settle on a story about a boy on a sand planet who saves the galaxy. The adults revel in the nostalgia and the kids are now excited about space adventures.

At night you return to the motel room you and Joel have been given for the duration of your stay, only to find him already sleeping. Or at least you think he is. He’s pretty good at faking it.

With no need to take watch, you plop down onto the empty bed and stare up at the ceiling. You count the cracks – one, two, three, four. Sleep doesn’t come to you. You glance over at Joel where he’s lying on top of the covers, his back to you.

The next day Gabe asks you to go out of town searching for supplies and you agree. Joel says nothing, just reminds you to take your gun.

The nearby town is infested with infected, but Gabe is good at luring them away. He teaches you how to throw bricks a good distance and you find you’re actually enjoying yourself.

You won’t lie, Gabe is attractive. He’s got fluffy brown hair and cute freckles dotting his face. He’s just a little taller than Joel, but lankier. He flirts with you a little and you like it.

“What’s the situation between you and Joel?” he asks you out of the blue as you take your time getting back to town.

“We’re friends. Or at least I think. We’ve been traveling together for a while.” The sun makes you squint and you make a mental note to steal some sunglasses somewhere.

“He doesn’t really seem like the friend type,” Gabe notes.

“He’s not really a _people_ type.”

“No offense, but he’s kind of a dick.”

This makes you laugh. “Tell me about it.”

There’s a short moment of silence before Gabe talks again. “Why are you traveling together?”

“We’re heading north, got some business to take care of.”

“Ah.”

“Why do you ask?”

“About where you’re going?”

“No, about me and Joel.”

“Oh, uh.” He laughs nervously and rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Trust me, nothing can make me uncomfortable at this point.”

“Well, I think you’re pretty. And I think you’re nice.”

Your heart leaps in your chest. It’s been a long time since anyone called you pretty. “Keep going.”

He smiles sheepishly. “Don’t get cocky.”

“Too late.”

When he kisses you, you kiss back.

You don’t say anything to Joel. It feels like you’re going behind his back, spending time with Gabe who you’re inevitably going to leave behind. But it feels good to be wanted by someone. While Joel’s company has gotten better over the months, he still keeps you at arm’s length and it takes hours of work for him to let you in.

A week goes by and the splint comes off. The doctor clears you of both your cold and your broken nose. You don’t bother mentioning your knee.

You convince Joel to stay a couple extra days which he’s displeased by, but really you don’t want to say goodbye to Gabe just yet. Or maybe you just don’t want to be alone with Joel again.

You quickly realize you should’ve just left when Gabe takes you to a beautiful meadow, only to be found by a pack of clickers. You get enough warning to try and run for it, but Gabe trips and fractures his ankle.

“Go! Just leave!”

But you can’t. You can’t leave someone else behind.

You try to help him up but he simply falls down again.

“Please, just go. I won’t let you die with me.”

“No, I-”

“Go.”

Your legs are heavy as you leave him behind, a single bullet being the last noise you hear before getting back to town.

* * *

You’re the one to tell Jeremiah. He tells you to get the fuck out of the town and never come back. If you do, you’ll get a bullet between your eyes.

You don’t tell Joel what happened right away, just that you have to leave now. Outside the town he hotwires a car and you sit in silence for a while before you tell him the truth.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” he tells you after about a half hour of tense silence.

You don’t respond, instead trying to focus on the fingerprints left on the window.

“Things happen. We just gotta live with it and move on.”

“You’re not exactly a poster child for moving on,” you say.

“Do as I say, not as I do.” You feel him glance over at you. “You’ve, uh, been doing good. I want you to know that.”

You bite down hard on your lip to keep from crying. It’s all too much – the guilt, the anger, the heartbreak. Everything hurts. You’re afraid that if you start you won’t be able to stop and Joel’s never seen you at rock bottom before. What if he doesn’t comfort you and you’re left to break down on your own? What if he treats you differently? If you could just get to New York you can leave all these what ifs behind and do whatever you want. But Joel’s fucking up everything by being a better person and you hate that you’re not as happy about it as you should be.

The car ride becomes quiet and you can tell Joel wants to say something else, but he’s at least being respectful of your boundaries. You end up falling asleep for a few hours and he gently wakes you up when it’s time to get out and walk.

You push forward longer than you should and Joel is finally the one to make you both stop so you can rest your knee. You sit on a wooden fence, legs dangling in the air below you. Joel is busy looking through the house behind you until he returns, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

“Listen, I know this is hard,” he starts.

“I know you do. Joel, this isn’t the first time I felt like I let somebody die. It’s just…I don’t know. It’s just really hitting me this time.”

“You cared about him.” It isn’t a question.

“It wasn’t like I was in love him or anything. But, yeah. I cared about him. He was nice to me.”

Joel’s gaze turns down to his shoes. Eventually you’re the one that breaks the silence.

“Do you think either of us could, like…settle down?” When he arches a brow you continue. “I mean, like we find a settlement and we just stay there.”

“Maybe you’ll find one in New York.”

For some reason it bothers you when he reminds you that he won’t be staying with you – that once you get to New York you’ll be on your own. There’s a tug in your heart every time and God you fucking hate it. You hate it even more to admit that you care about Joel like you cared about Gabe. And you know deep down that nothing with Gabe would have ever lasted. But Joel…that’s a different story you’re not ready to look into.

“Have you been with anyone since the outbreak?” After you say it you regret it and add, “You don’t have to tell me.”

“No,” he tells you.

“Too busy surviving?”

He pauses. “Too busy surviving.”

You sigh deeply and jump off the fence. “We should probably get going.”


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: language, sexual references, reference to self-harm

It’s your turn to pull away and it seems to visibly disturb Joel.

For all the times he’s poked fun and gotten pissy about your talkative nature, it seems he’s realized he took it for granted over all these months.

Winter slowly turns into spring and you feel some of your anger started to dissolve when flowers start sprouting up again. You get distracted by them, sometimes picking them and putting them in your hair. You save up some and make a crown that you wear until the wind blows it off. You offer it to Joel who tells you it looks better on you. Your face flushes.

A lot of times you both take breaks and just enjoy the nicer weather. At night you like to lay on some grass and stare up at the stars. Joel doesn’t always join you, but sometimes you fall asleep and wake up to find him next to you, one arm under his head, the other across his stomach.

Now that he’s back to wearing regular t-shirts, you really start to notice all the scars that litter his skin, occasionally taking pleasure in checking out his muscles. But now you feel a little less guilty about it and you try to figure out where all the scars came from. Other people? Accidents? Himself?

You, of course, have your own fair share of scars. And they fit all of the above.

“Y/N?”

You suddenly realize Joel’s been calling your name, but you’ve been too busy watching the clouds. They’re getting grayer and your knee is acting up. Must be rain coming.

“Yeah?” you say.

“Can you come help me with this?”

He’s found a ladder to help you both get up to the second floor of a building where the stairs have been completely blocked off. However the ladder is broken in half and absolutely no use, so he boosts you up and you offer help with your hand.

He gives you a quiet “thanks” when he’s up and brushes off his jeans. “How ya doing?”

This catches you by surprise. Normally Joel only asks how you’re doing when something bad has happened. He doesn’t check up on you.

“I’m okay,” you say.

“You sure?”

You pause for a deep breath, glancing up at the sky again. “No.”

“Wanna talk?”

This is…unusual. Nice, but unusual. Ultimately your answer is, “Not really. Do you?”

“Not really.”

“I guess that settles it.”

He sighs. “I guess.”

God, he’s acting weird. Just when you think you’re starting to understand him, he veers off into territory you’re not quite used to.

Normally you’d want to talk about your feelings. Gabe’s death affected you badly and it’s not just because you had some feelings for him (and realized you might possibly maybe have some similar feelings for Joel). The clickers ambushed you when you both had been too busy doing something else and you were helpless to do anything. _It’s your fault,_ you mind keeps telling you. _You let him die_.

Maybe you don’t want to talk about it to spite Joel in some way. It’s taken so long for him to open up to you and now he wants _you_ to open up to _him_? Where was he the past year? Too far up his own ass?

There’s an uncomfortable silence that falls between you two. Joel leads while you trail behind him, lost in your own thoughts. There’s a sign off the highway that reads WASHINGTON D.C. NEXT EXIT.

Back on course. Only took half a year. Or something like that. You never did make a new calendar.

* * *

 

It turns out the D.C. zone is completely destroyed.

“Keep an eye out for hunters,” Joel tells you.

You go through a checkpoint and loot all the bodies you find, though there isn’t much to take. The zone has clearly been abandoned for years. The bodies are still in the process of decomposing, currently stuck between gaunt ghouls and full skeletons. You can tell apart the guards from the citizens from their clothes and judging by the bullet holes, the place wasn’t taken down by infected.

Is this what other zones are like? You’d heard Boston still thrived, or at least the closest thriving is in the apocalypse. Rumors swirled of Chicago and Seattle, but no one has any proof to support one argument or the other.

“Can we make a pit stop?” you ask while you set up camp in an abandoned pharmacy.

Joel, who simply seems pleased that you spoke first, immediately responds with, “What kind of pit stop?”

“I’ve never seen the capital. Or the White House. It would be cool to spend a night in the oval office or something. I mean, kids being born these days – they won’t ever know how important that place was.”

“Which is exactly why we need to stay clear of it.”

Your heart drops a little. “Yeah, you’re right. There’s probably a bunch of hunters around it. It was a bad idea.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad idea,” he says quickly.

You put up your hands. “Relax, I’m not being passive aggressive, I swear.”

A weird silence falls between you.

“You tired?” asks Joel.

“Not really.”

“You know how to play rummy 500?”

“What?”

“Did I stutter?”

You bite your bottom lip to stop from smiling, but Joel notices your resistance. “No, Joel. I don’t know how to play rummy 500.”

“Well, good. Because I happen to have a deck of cards and some time to kill.”

And so he teaches you how to play. You get the hang of it quickly, much to his surprise. You purposefully mess up the first game so you can hear him explain the rules again. His voice is more relaxing than any drug.

When he’s not looking you take time to really look at him yourself. The wrinkles around his eyes, the little gray hairs – your heart starts racing in that weird way that makes your stomach flip. It’s ridiculous and you know it. You’ve seen him at his worst, you’ve seen him kill innocents and think nothing of it, but who in this world hasn’t done something horrible? You’re not much different from him in that way. Maybe, if you allow yourself, you can find some sort of solace in him. Two stubborn assholes taking on the world together – that didn’t sound half bad.

“You know how to play chess?” you ask.

He puts his accent on thick. “Yes I do, Ms. Chess Club President.”

“I never said I was _president_ of the chess club.”

“You’ve just got that vibe.” He gives you a smug, knowing look.

“Didn’t know I had a vibe.”

For the strangest moment, you have the urge to kiss him. It comes on quickly and you hope to God you’re not reading him wrong, but it’s Joel so it’s hard to tell. What may be flirty from someone else is just kindness from him and there’s no chance in hell you’re risking making anything more awkward than it already is.

You clear your throat and lean back. “God, I miss video games. Hey, maybe my PlayStation is still in New York. All we need to do is hook up some power. I can return the favor and show you how play some stuff.”

“Video games were never really my thing,” he says.

“But you’ve played?” He nods. “Sarah?”

“Yeah.” Grief glosses over his eyes.

“What kind of games did she play?” You keep your voice soft and quiet, finally starting to understand his boundaries and how best to talk to him.

“The kind you need an ID for,” he says fondly.

It’s actually the most you know about Sarah. He mentions her here and there, but he never really tells you anything. So Sarah liked violent video games – you would’ve liked her just for that.

That night you take first watch. With not much to do you go back to looking out at the stars, your mind wandering. You wonder what it’d be like to kiss Joel, what his beard would feel like against your skin. You imagine his fingers on your arms, your face, your thighs. You imagine your own fingers in his hair, running your nails down his bare back, him pressed down on you as he kisses you just below your ear, moving down to your neck, your chest, between your breasts -

Okay, what the everloving _fuck?_

No, this is bad. Really, really bad. There’s a growing heat between your legs caused by fantasizing about the man in the other room and that’s so _bad_ …right? For all you know, he could’ve done the same thing about you.

No, no, _no!_ It’s one thing to have a bit of a crush on him – you can’t blame yourself for that. He’s handsome and you haven’t been with anyone since you left New York. But to _fantasize?_ There’s something about it that feels so wrong.

But at the same time, it’s only in your head, right? As long as it’s just there it can’t do anything.

 _No._ This is something you can’t allow.

When your shift is over you wake up Joel and your mind is wracked with guilt that is only worsened when your dreams are filled of your repressed fantasizes.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: language

You end up at a small university where you take shelter in the dorms. You spend some time searching around the campus for supplies, but just about everything has been picked clean. Not that you’re surprised.

As if to insult you, you end up finding a box of condoms stashed away under a bed. Not that you could use them anyway, it’s been expired for years. When Joel comes in the room you chuck the box into a corner of the room and try to play coy, but the heat in your face betrays you.

“You alright?” he asks. He _has_ to see the redness in your cheeks and that just makes it worse.

“I’m fine,” you say.

“You sure?”

You clear your throat but it only makes you seem more suspicious. Ignoring his cocked eyebrow, you walk past him and into the hall. “We need to pick some shelter for the night.”

By the time the sun sets it starts raining. And it rains and rains and rains.

Joel chose to set up camp in a common area where a dull lamp illuminates the room until flashes of lightning do a better job. Thunder racks the building, shaking the floor along with it. Each clash makes you jump.

Because of this you take first watch, knowing you won’t be able to sleep until the storm passes. You take to venturing around the room, looking at old brochures and textbooks, going through backpacks that were left behind. You’re used to rifling through others’ things, but this time it feels…dirtier. Everything is almost exactly the same as it had been left when the outbreak hit. Part of you wants to preserve that.

When morning comes you set out again, continuing north. If everything goes as planned it shouldn’t take a lot longer to get to New York. But then again your plans keep getting thrown out the window so who the fuck knows.

“God, I hated college,” you remark as you pass an auditorium. “Worst years of my life.”

Joel squints, like he’s not sure why you’ve decided to start talking now. “Not enough partying?”

“I’m flattered you think I was invited to parties. I cared more about grades than anything.” You pause, glancing up at the nearly cloudless sky. “It’s where I met my husband.”

He pauses. “Ah.”

“Yeah.” You chew thoughtfully on your bottom lip. “What about your wife? I mean, where did you meet?”

He tenses up as per usual, but he still answers. “High school.”

“Aw, that’s sweet.” It makes you smile. High school sweethearts, Joel and Joel’s wife. Sarah’s mom. Whatever her name is.

There’s a nostalgic look on his face, like he’s remembering some good times for once instead of the bad. It’s a nice look him.

“If it makes you feel any better, she was kind of a nerd, too,” he says.

“Oh no, don’t tell me you picked on her.”

His lips twitch. “Maybe a little.”

“Joel, you son of a bitch.” You mindlessly kick an empty soda can. “What happened between you two?”

He looks down, like he’s ashamed. “We were, uh, teen parents.”

It’s hard to imagine a teen Joel let alone a teen Joel with a baby. Actually, Joel with a baby itself is hard to imagine. You figure he just came out of the womb like this. “That must have been rough.”

“It was.”

When an uncomfortable silence takes over, you fill it. “My husband wanted kids.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. Just not with him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. The bastard’s dead now, thank God. I’m still bitter though. I wasted years of my life with him. Maybe it was for the best. I can’t imagine what I’d be doing now if I’d had kids pre-outbreak.”

Joel doesn’t say anything else and he doesn’t need to.

The conversation sparks some unwanted thoughts about Joel and you end up wondering what he’s like as a father.

You’d always wanted the perfect family – spouse, kids, two story house with a white picket fence. Of course you’d also always wanted the career of your dreams and enough money to last you the rest of your life. None of that worked out. You were married young to a man that never loved you and was ready to sacrifice you the night of the outbreak. Over time you found joy in replaying the memory of him being ripped apart like instant karma.

But now you’re imaging having kids with Joel. You picture a little boy with your hair and little girl with Joel’s eyes. It brings you a weird comfort but also a terrible guilt. You shouldn’t be thinking about Joel like that, but it’s just a daydream. Juvenile, but still a daydream.

You wish you could’ve met Sarah.

“It’s okay if you don’t wanna talk about this,” you say.

“Thanks.”

“I could talk about something else instead.”

“Or maybe we could have some peace and quiet.”

He’s joking. You can tell that. There was a relief in his eyes when you started talking to him before, like he was afraid you’d soon be going into a comatose state.

“Do you _know_ me?” you tease.

“Unfortunately.”

“Rude. Just admit it, you enjoy my company.”

He thinks for a moment and you wonder if he’s really contemplating it. “I’ve been with worse people.”

You can’t stop the smile that breaks out across your face. There’s a warmth that fills you at his words as if he’d just complimented you. He had, in a way. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me. I think I might cry.”

He groans. “If you cry I’m leaving you here.”

“Alright, alright. I’ll rein it in.” You readjust the straps of your backpack, the sweat on your shoulders making them slip. “Y’know, for the record, you’re not as bad as I thought you were. I mean, you kind of were at first, but now not so much.”

“Let’s just get a move on.”


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: language, violence

3\. Bargaining 

Everything is shattered when Joel gets shot.

You’ve both dealt with your fair share of injuries over the months, but they’ve all been relatively easy to treat. Broken bones that need healing, stab wounds that get stitched up. Neither of you have gotten anything worse than a regular cold with a runny nose and a cough, which you’re thankful for.

It all happens so fast that you’re sure you won’t remember everything correctly even in just a few hours.

“Barnes and Noble.”

For a moment you’re not sure if you heard him correctly. “What?”

Joel points toward a building a few blocks away. “You said you wanted to find some new books.”

This alarms you for a few reasons and you’re tempted to ask him some rather personal questions to make sure he isn’t some doppelgänger. Joel doesn’t do pit stops. He doesn’t ever stop for things unless absolutely necessary. You’d stolen a few books here and there to help with the boredom during travels when Joel stayed quiet and he never stopped you – sure, he side eyed the hell out of you and made a comment here and there about weighing down your backpack, but he never did anything. But to have him actually suggest it – you’re baffled.

“Who are you and what have you done with Joel?”

For a moment you’re worried you insulted him. “I mean, if you don’t want to-”

“No, no, no! I do. I really do.”

The place is a mess, but most of the books are still there. Bookshelves are toppled over and some ripped out pages cover the floor, but considering the state of the rest of the world, it seems in pretty good shape.

Joel waits by the door as you venture up to the second floor and run your fingers over the spines. There’s so many to choose from and it’s hard to make a decision. You don’t want to be stuck with something you’ll hate.

You can feel him watch you. You glance over at him to see he’s leaning against the door frame, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes on you makes your face flush and you remind yourself he’s just keeping an eye out for trouble while letting you have some space. It’s not a sign he’s into you like you’re into him.

You settle on a couple of generic young adult novels you’re sure will be entertaining enough for killing time and return to Joel. He’ll make fun of you, but his humor has become more light-hearted teasing than anything else. In fact, you actually kind of like it.

“You have no idea how much I needed this,” you say, flashing the books to him before stuffing them in your backpack.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d say that Joel almost looks…happy. Or maybe it’s pride. You really don’t care. Things are much easier when there’s little to no tension between the two of you and if making you happy somehow makes him happy then that’s definitely a favorable arrangement.

Of course it goes to shit when a bullet strikes him from behind and he hits the ground hard. Another bullet whizzes by your head, but you’ve already ducked to pull Joel behind the cover of the counter.

“Jesus fuck!” is all you can say. You risk a peak out and a flashing light makes you get down before a bullet hits the counter.

Beside you Joel is gritting his teeth, revolver in his hands. Blood is dripping from the side of the counter and you try to push him forward to get a better look.

“Leave it,” he says, his voice strained.

“Let me see it.”

“No.”

You decide it’s best not to argue with him in such a tense situation and let it go, but that doesn’t mean you won’t bring it back up again once you’re safe.

“It’s a sniper,” you tell him. “I think he’s in the church tower.” When Joel grunts in both acknowledgement and pain you go back on your earlier decision. “At least let me try and stop the bleeding.”

You pull bandages out from your backpack and try and clean the wound as much as possible, Joel’s free hand in a tight fist, his knuckles turning white. He reluctantly moves forward so you can get a good look at his back.

“Well, good news is both the exit and entry wounds are relatively the same size,” you say to him when you’ve finished.

He nods in response.

“I just – I need to clean the wound but I don’t have anything I need with me.”

“We can’t leave with that sniper on our asses.”

_Shit, shit, shit._

You see two possibilities – you attempt to get Joel to safety and get out of the town and hope there’s some supplies somewhere, but that’s only if you both get out alive. The other is you leave Joel there, take out the sniper yourself, and be guaranteed an escape, but that’s only if Joel doesn’t bleed out first.

_Shit!_

“Stay here,” you tell him.

“Y/N…” He reaches out to stop you, but you get to your feet. 

“I’m gonna take care of the sniper, just stay here.”

“I ain’t letting you do that.”

“And what are you gonna do? Joel, please.”

God, there’s so much blood. It’s all over your hands and your jeans and you realize your entire body is shaking. Maybe it’s from the fear, maybe from the adrenaline. Or maybe it’s because Joel might die if you can’t help him and man do you feel fucking helpless right now.

You flashback to the meadow and the sickening crack of Gabe’s ankle. _Not again. Please not again._

He doesn’t offer any more arguments as you sneak around the counter and head for the backdoor.

It takes you about twenty minutes to sneak around the plaza to stay out of the sniper’s sight, but soon you’re presented with a wide street to get across where you’re visible in every direction. You could always go even farther around, but that takes more time and you’re not even sure if Joel is still alive at this point.

The idea of him dying scares you more than you care to admit. You try to tell yourself it’s because you’re a team and you’ve survived so much together, but you know deep down it’s more than that. Somehow you’ve come to care for him, despite his edge and overall Joel-ness. And you’ll be damned if you don’t keep him alive.

You run for it and the sniper takes a shot at you and misses. It’s a long trek up the inside of the church, especially with so much of it barricaded. You have a feeling you know who’s responsible.

The sniper, it turns out, is a teenage boy. You’re shocked when you get inside the top of the tower, gun raised and pointed at his head. He puts his arms up in surrender, fear coating his face.

Maybe if you’d been in the situation a few years ago, hell, even a few _months_ ago, you’d have done something different. Maybe you’d have talked him down, taken him with you, offered him safety. But when you spot the rifle used to shoot Joel you finally come to terms with the world you live in.

You pull the trigger.

You return to Joel with a new sniper rifle and some supplies. He’s actually waited, but he doesn’t look good and you gently tap his face to get his attention. The bleeding hasn’t completely stopped, but it’s slowed down considerably.

He watches you closely as you do a better job at cleaning his wound to the best of your ability. You help him up when he’s ready to go and he uses you to keep himself steady as you search for a car. He must be really out of it to accept your help.

It takes about a half hour to find one and Joel looks like he’s about to pass out. He tries to walk you through the steps of starting it up, but he collapses half way through. Your heart sinks deep into your stomach and your eyes burn.

“No, no, no!”

Joel’s heavier than you predicted, but you manage to get him in the back of the car, laying him out on the seats. You try to imitate what he’s done a dozen times during your time together and for some reason you start crying when the engine roars to life. You place your forehead on the steering wheel and let it out – ugly, broken sobs. Your mind is racing uncontrollably. What if he doesn’t wake up? What if you can’t find anything to help him with? What if you’re left alone in a world determined to kill you?

It’s not just the loneliness itself that scares you. It’s being without him by your side, knowing he’s got your back no matter what happens. Trust like that is so hard to come by and you don’t want it slipping through your fingers.

You drive him to a family clinic and risk leaving him unconscious in the car while you look for supplies. Of fucking course everything is picked over and you don’t know why you stopped at a hospital years into the fucking apocalypse. What were you thinking? You return to the car and take his pulse. It’s there – weak, but still there. You check his wounds and attempt to clean them out again with water before giving him some new bandages. The bleeding has stopped altogether. Now all you have to do is wait for him to wake up.

With nothing else to do, you continue driving.

* * *

“Y/N.”

You’re startled so badly you nearly swerve off the road, but you compose yourself fast enough to come to a stop without making him hit the back of your seat. You turn around to see he’s definitely woken up, a hand over the exit wound as he tries to sit up.

“Oh, thank God.” You’re out of the front and into the back in a hurry and by the time you’re back there you’re not exactly sure what to do. You’ve been keeping up with changing the bandages and cleaning the wound. You don’t want to admit it, but really you just want to sit next to him to know for sure he’s alive and _God he’s alive_.

“We’re in a car,” he says as he takes in the backseat.

“Yeah. You kinda passed out on me.”

He breathes deeply for a few moments before finally turning to you. “There was a sniper.”

“We’re all good.” You say it a bit too fast and there’s a flash of something in Joel’s eyes. There’s still a bit of guilt in you for killing the boy, but you just couldn’t risk it, you couldn’t risk Joel. Maybe he knows that, sitting next to you in a stolen car after you saved his life when he’s given you every reason to let him die.

He simply nods and reaches for the door handle.

“Whoa, what do you think you’re doing?” You reach over him and pull his hand away. “I’m driving this time, cowboy.”

He frowns. “Cowboy?”

“Yeah. ‘Cause you’re from Texas.”

He leans back in the seat. “Whatever you say, Yankee.”

There’s a fondness in his voice and your chest tightens in a way you’d really like it not to. A smile crosses your face as he settles in and you return to the driver’s seat.

“I told you bringing along books only cause more trouble.”

You bite your cheek, but you can’t help but grin at his teasing.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: violence, language

It’s when Joel gets the chills that you start to worry again.

The car breaks down a day later and you’re on foot. You can see in his face that he’s not feeling himself. He’s sweating profusely and while the summer heat has really settled in, his skin is pale and he looks to be on the verge of passing out.

“Let’s stop for a moment,” you say softly. Joel’s definitely not in good shape. He doesn’t protest as you take his arm and have him sit down on a bench. He’s breathing heavily and coughs again. The action seems to drain him of energy.

You’re not sure you want to know the answer, but you check the gunshot wounds only to find you’re unfortunately correct in your theory. The wound is swollen and red and frankly pretty gross. You pat away the drainage with the bandages, only to feel how hot his skin is around the wound.

“Joel, you’ve got an infection,” you say.

“I’m fine.” He’s got that edge to his voice that irritates the hell out of you.

“Would you _please_ stop being stubborn for just one goddamn moment? You’re not going anywhere like this.”

He doesn’t put up a fight as you drape one arm around your shoulders. You can tell he’s trying not to let his weight fall on you, but it gets harder and harder for him as you attempt to find a good place for him to rest.

You decide on a tiny spa where at least there’s a bed for him to somewhat comfortably lay on. You help him onto the bed and attend to his wound the best you can with what you’ve got. Unfortunately, it isn’t a lot.

“Shit, shit, shit.” You dig through your backpack for something, _anything_ , but you used up everything in your medical arsenal. All you’ve got left is a single painkiller that you give to Joel with the water bottle. As he’s taking it, you zip up your backpack and check how much ammo you still have.

“Y/N…” his voice is weak and he lays back down on the bed like he barely has the energy to even stay awake.

“I have to go looking for supplies.”

You wait for him to respond, but he’s fallen asleep. He almost looks peaceful, like he’s not dying of an infection. You place a hand on his cheek, gently stroking his hair and taken aback by how heated his face is.

“Please don’t die while I’m gone,” you tell him. Had he been awake you would have never had the courage to place a soft kiss on his forehead, but with his eyes closed you lean down and press your lips against his hot skin. “I’ll be back.”

* * *

You’re not as lucky as you hoped to be.

You stumble onto a drug store a few blocks away, but everything is already gone. You do, however, find a map of the town and start searching each building for anything to help. Antibiotics are naturally on the top of your list, but you’d also take disinfectant or painkillers or even just some fucking Tylenol. The longer you’re gone the more worried you get that you’ll return to find Joel dead and the idea terrifies you more than you want to believe.

The feelings you had when he got shot come back up and in the summer heat you don’t have the energy to try and push them down. You can’t ignore the lingering feelings in your chest.

You eventually find some disinfectant stashed away in a lockbox that you shoot open and return to the spa. Joel is, fortunately, still breathing. While you didn’t find antibiotics, you try cleaning out his wound again. He sleeps through it and you’re grateful for that.

After an hour you start to get bored and you wander around the spa, barricading the doors and windows just in case. You lay next to him for a little while, his hot body better than any furnace or fire, not to mention the closeness calms you. You’ve forgotten how good it is to be close to someone, to lay next to them. When Joel wakes up you’re going to have a lot of repression to do.

There is, of course, the pressing matter of what if he doesn’t get better. What if he gets worse? You aren’t an expert like your father, but you do know the signs of sepsis and Joel is dangerously close if he isn’t there already, but without medication, you won’t be surprised if he’s dead in a few days tops.

You get up, paranoia taking over you. Joel’s tough. He’s been through a lot. But his body can only take so much.

It isn’t long before you end up in the hands of shady people in a pharmacy a town over. They don’t seem too bad on the surface, but you’ve seen the worst of humanity and it’s only a matter of time before they turn on you.

It’s a family of five: a mother, a father, two boys, and their grandmother. They almost shot you when you started going through the store, but offered you a seat at dinner when they heard your stomach growl.

“If you stay,” said the mother, “we’ll help you with what you’re looking for.”

The problem is that after you sit down, they ambush you, strapping down your arms and legs as they set the table.

“Please,” you say, “I just need antibiotics. I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Who said we want you gone?” says the father.

They eat like a normal family and when you keep butting in they gag you and you stay still and quiet, waiting for your chance to strike.

* * *

The cell they put you in is dark and cold, but before the father leaves he lights a candle so you can just barely see your surroundings.

You wish you hadn’t.

There’s bones and there’s body parts and _oh God_ it’s so horrible that you dry heave until you can get used to the sight and the smell.

So this is it, you think. Joel is going to die alone of septic shock and you’re going to get picked apart by these freaks and no one will ever know. Tommy, still waiting in Florida, will never find out what happened to his brother. Will he move on? Will he stay there forever, thinking maybe, _just maybe_ , Joel will show up someday?

It feels like your heart is going to explode and your whole body is a sweaty, shaky mess. Is this what a heart attack feels like? Maybe it’s a good thing – they might want to keep you alive for their sinister purposes.

But when you calm down it’s clear it was just a panic attack and once your head is clear you’re filled with newfound determination.

These people won’t keep you from Joel. That much is certain.

When one of the sons comes to check on you, you put your plan into motion.

“You have to let me go,” you beg.

“Why would I do that?” he asks.

You hold onto the bars, praying this all works. “Because I’m pregnant,” you lie smoothly.

He jumps back. “What?”

“Please, just – just let me go. No one will know.”

“They’ll know it was me.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Open the door and I can prove it.”

He’s the only person you kill. There’s too many of them to take on your own and it’s not like in the movies. You’re scared shitless and on a time sensitive mission, so grabbing the antibiotics is the only thing on your mind.

You find some on your way out that you give to Joel immediately upon returning. You’re relieved to find he’s still got a pulse.

He wakes up the next day, startling you from your sleep. He’s still weak and fevered, but he’s gotten better and you continue to periodically administer the antibiotics you have left.

“How long have I been sleeping?” he asks.

For some reason this makes you laugh. “You weren’t sleeping, dumbass. You were out cold.”

He lays back down and sighs, a hand over his wound. Then he turns to face you. “You, uh, alright?”

“You don’t need to worry about me. You’re the one who almost died.”

He grunts and closes his eyes.

“I thought you were gonna die,” you say quietly. He opens his eyes as you pull up a chair and sit next to him. He props himself up, groaning as he swings his legs over the side. “I was so scared, Joel.”

He keeps his gaze trained on the floor and breathes out through his nose. “There ain’t nothing to be scared about.”

Without warning you jump up and wrap your arms around him, his legs on either side of you. You bury your fingers in his hair, your face pressed into the crook of his neck.

He’s clearly taken aback, but a few moments later there’s a warm hand on your back, ever so gently pulling you forward.

You could stay like this forever, you realize. You don’t care about smells or consequences, just that Joel is alive and recovering. He isn’t shrinking away from your touch, he isn’t pushing you away. He’s letting you hold him, his head resting on your abdomen. How long has it been since either of you had any kind of intimacy with anyone? You must be more touch-starved than you realize.

After the relief passes heat rises in your cheeks and you pull away. “I should go looking for more supplies. We’ll probably stay here for a while.” You keep your face out of his eyesight, scared he’ll see the redness under your skin.

“Y/N…” he says.

“I’ll be back soon.” You stick your gun in the waist of your jeans and take off.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: violence, language, gore

Joel awakes to find he’s alone. He figures you just haven’t gotten back yet, but he’s feeling more like himself so he gets up and starts looking around the spa, calling out your name.

He waits. And waits. And the longer he waits, the more worried he becomes.

You said you’d be back soon. How long had he been sleeping? He still looks down at his broken watch as it it’ll tell him the time and sighs.

You can’t have gone far, he assumes, so he grabs his own gun and takes a slow stroll out onto the street. The sun is setting, leaving the small town quiet and eerie with an orange glow. It’d be pretty if it weren’t for the circumstances. He doesn’t risk calling out your name.

He checks the stores, inside and out, and returns to the spa every so often to see if you’ve come back.

You haven’t.

By the time night falls he _knows_ something’s wrong and his chest feels uncomfortably tight. You could be fine, or you could be out there, being ripped apart by God knows what. You’re his priority, his responsibility, his…something. He’s not quite sure what the word is yet.

The last place he checks is a farmhouse just outside the town. Before he can sneak inside and have a look around, an older man comes out the front door.

“Hey, stranger!” he says.

Joel’s hand goes to the revolver tucked into the waist of his jeans, ready to draw.

“Is there something I can help you with?” says the man.

“I’m just looking for someone,” says Joel.

“There’s no one here to be looking for. Just go on your way.”

He chews on the inside of his lip. There’s something not right here and he’s not leaving until he finds out what it is.

“Maybe you can help me,” he says.

“Of course.” The man smiles. “What does she look like?”

Joel’s blood runs cold, like he’s been doused in ice water. His voice gets deep as he says, “I never said she.”

* * *

He finds you strapped to a chair in the basement, a good amount of blood running down the left side of your face. It’s way too much for just a cut. It’s matted in your hair, stained in your t-shirt. Either you lost enough blood or they knocked you out. Your head tilted to the side, unmoving. His throat constricts, but then he sees your chest moving – good. You’re breathing. And now he can, too.

He creeps up to you, careful not to alert anyone else in the house, and moves your bloodied hair aside. His heart drops to the pit of his stomach and he nearly throws up. “Jesus Christ.”

Your ear is gone and not even cut clean off. A poorly done stitching job is in its place with some blood soaked bandages that wrap around your head. There’s suddenly movement upstairs and he checks behind himself before slipping out a knife and cutting you free. It wakes you up, your head moving slightly.

“Joel…?” Your voice cracks.

“It’s me,” he says softly.

Your breathing is shallow and fast and the moment you’re cut loose you fall right into his arms. He doesn’t even realize he’s holding you until you bury your face in the crook of his neck, leaving his skin wet with blood and tears.

“I’ve got you,” he says quietly as you cry. “I’ve got you, honey.”

“Please don’t leave me, Joel.”

His grip on the back of your shirt tightens, but he doesn’t say anything. In your semi-delirious state it doesn’t seem to bother you.

“I’ll be back,” he says, blood boiling when he sees the bloodied side of your head again.

“Joel-” you start.

“I’ll be back.” He’s sterner this time, a bit more forceful than he intended. But he’s not leaving this house until everyone in it is dead.

He gets hurt in the process, but he barely even feels it. A knife is plunged into his thigh. He can deal with it later. Right now all he cares about is making them suffer, making them bleed just like they made you bleed. _You,_ who has been nothing but kind and caring. _You_ , who has put up with him all this way. _You_ , who only has love to give.

 _You._ His…something. But his, nonetheless.

He’s covered in their blood by the time he’s done. It’s on his clothes, his skin, his knife. He leaves their bodies behind for someone else to find. Maybe the infected will. He doesn’t care.

When he returns to the basement you’re passed out again and he carries you bridal style to the family’s car. He’s careful as he places you in the back and drives you to the spa. He patches you up himself the best he can, the sight of your wound making him sick guilt – one job. He had one fucking job. What would your father say if he saw you like this?

He fixes up his leg in the meantime, checking your wound every so often while you sleep. Is this what you felt like while he suffered through his infection? It’s been a long time since he’s felt this stressed.

But you’ll be fine. You always are. You persevere, just like him. You’re survivors.

You’ll be _fine._

He sits down next to you where you’re curled up on your right side. Carefully with callused hands, he moves some of your hair out of your face. He’s not quite sure why he does it.

Or really he _does_ , but he just can’t admit. He doesn’t know what’ll happen if he does, but it won’t be good because at some point, you’ll be saying goodbye. After you’re set up in New York, he’ll head back down to Florida, get the ration cards, and move himself and Tommy out of there. It’s for the best, he thinks.

Because the longer he stays with you, the harder it will be to leave.

And Joel always leaves.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really wanna thank you guys again for following this story and leaving such sweet comments, i can't being to tell you how much it means to me. i've only got a couple more chapters left - it's wild!
> 
> chapter warnings: language, gore

4\. Depression

No one ever prepared you for not having an ear. It makes things harder – you can’t hear what’s on your left and Joel attempts to compensate for you. If he’s walking on your side he stays on the right, though these days he seems…distant.

Of course, you blame yourself.

It’s not like you don’t see the look on his face when his eyes travel to the side of your head like he’s the one at fault. You’ve tried bringing it up a few times but it’s hard to talk about, even for you. For once you’re lucky he isn’t a feelings kind of person.

When you reach the outskirts of New York City a new kind of fills you. Originally you planned to go around the QZ but it had been lost to hunters years after you left. The city is left in ruin, but it shaves off some time. Soon you’ll be on a quiet farm, starting to forget.

Joel follows you up a building so you can get a bird’s eye view. By the time you’ve climbed all thirty stories your knee is absolutely fucking killing you, but at least it means you barely feel the burning in your legs. Sweat forms on your brow and you wipe it off with the back of your hand. There’s a pair of binoculars left behind that you use.

The Empire State Building has unfortunately toppled over and only half of it remains standing. The Statue of Liberty remains upright, though, her torch pointed toward the sky.

“Looks clear,” you say, handing them over to Joel who stands at your right. “You ever see the Statue of Liberty?”

“Nope,” says Joel.

“You ever been to New York?”

“Nope.”

“Well, then, welcome to New York City, New York. My name is Y/N and I’ll be your tour guide today.” You point to Lady Liberty. “That there is the Statue of Liberty. It was dropped off by the aliens as a peace offering, but the government covered it up when negotiations went south.”

He snorts. “You say the weirdest shit.”

“Keeps you on your toes, though, right?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

The sunset from up there is beautiful and vaguely romantic. You look over at Joel, appreciating the way the light brushes over his face.

“If it makes you feel any better this is only the third time I’ve seen it.”

“Only the third, huh?”

“Shut up. I was here once on a field trip and then again when my dad and I were traveling.”

He stares out at the city and with his attention elsewhere you’re given a chance to really look at him. Your infatuation with him hasn’t gone away, only evolved. It’s deeper now. At first it was just the realization that he’s an attractive person close to your age, but you still remember the utter _fear_ in his eyes when he found you in that basement. He wasn’t afraid of losing the ration cards or failing his task – he was afraid of losing you. Somehow, in some way, you’d managed to creep your way into his heart.

And that just made you love him more.

“I owe you an apology,” you blurt.

Joel pauses, keeping the binoculars up longer than he needed to. “What?”

“I shouldn’t have gone out. It was stupid.”

He heaves a heavy sigh and finally lowers them. “Don’t blame yourself. The only people to blame are the assholes who hurt you.”

“I left them alive. I should’ve known better.”

“Well, they’re dead now. There’s nothing to worry about.”

You lean forward on the rooftop railing, closing your eyes as a nice breeze blows by through your hair. The railing creaks as Joel joins you, the distance between you smaller than it used to be.

“I understand you a lot better now,” you say.

“How so?” He sounds like he doesn’t want to know the answer but knows to humor you.

“You have to kill to survive. I get it now. Even if someone is innocent, I can’t take that chance.” You hear a sharp intake of air and turn to face him. “What?”

He doesn’t meet your eyes. “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

“Why? This is exactly how you’ve felt the whole time.”

“That’s different.”

“How? How is it any different? If I had just killed those lunatics I would still have an ear, Joel!” You motion to Joel’s stitching job that’s slowly but surely healing. “Do you have any idea what they were going to do to me? They wanted to cut me up piece by piece for food.”

You shiver, recalling just how they explained their plans to you as they tied you to that chair. They hadn’t bothered to knock you out before starting the job, leaving you in the most painful, burning, _excruciating_ pain you’ve ever felt. It still haunts your sleep, leaving you crying softly when you wake up so Joel doesn’t notice.

“If you hadn’t killed them, how many others would they have hurt?” you continue. “How many more people would they kill?” You take a deep breath and pinch your nose, finally hearing the sharpness in your tone. “I’m sorry. It’s not fair for me to take this out on you.”

He fiddles with his watch in silence. You deflate, your shoulders slumped over as you turn away from him. Part of you misses the days when he would at least fight back.

“Let’s just go,” you say quietly.

He says your name and you stop, turning around to face him. But then he shakes his head.

“Never mind.”

* * *

You set up camp in an apartment building and you can’t help but wonder how many more times you’ll get to do this. Within a few days at most you’ll arrive at your destination and Joel will be on his way back to Tommy.

You start imagining your goodbye. A more daring part of you plans on kissing him at the last possible moment so you can hold on to the way his lips feel on yours, his beard rough against your skin. But you don’t know if you can handle knowing but not really knowing.

Getting a taste would be torture. You want _more_.

But that also runs the risk of him flat out rejecting you, leaving you with a feeling of utter humiliation that you’ll carry for the rest of your life. Chances of seeing him again are slim, but in a world like this, anything is possible.

He takes first watch and you try to fall asleep, but your mind is running wild. You can’t stop thinking about how scared he looked when he found you covered in blood and the darkness that filled him shortly afterwards.

You never knew Joel that well back in Tallahasee, but you heard stories. He was ruthless, violent, a monster. Some seemed far-fetched, but others were relatively believable. He only ever really cared about his brother and would do anything to keep him safe.

But you see him cleaning his gun from where you lay on the couch, a blanket over you that you certainly did not pull up yourself and you _know_ that’s not the real Joel.

* * *

Darkness. Pain. Blood. It’s happening all over again.

You hear your name but it’s distant.

“Is she prepped?” It’s one of _them._ They’re here to hurt you again. You try screaming but nothing comes out.

“Yep,” says another. Something shiny. A knife.

_Not again. Please not again._

Your name is called again. It’s closer this time. You know that voice.

The knife comes for you, but you can’t move. You’re completely helpless.

And then you wake up.

There’s something warm around you, your cheeks wet and your throat raw as you sob into something soft. One of Joel’s hands runs up and down your back in a soothing pattern while he tells you it’s okay. You grip onto his shirt like it’s the only thing keeping you afloat, the images in your head still so fresh.

“You’re safe,” he tells you, his accent thick with worry.

“I’m sorry,” you choke out.

He tightens his grip, one hand grasping the back of your head as he holds you close. You can’t remember the last time someone’s held you like this.

He stays with you until you fall back asleep.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: language

You arrive at the farm in the late afternoon when the air is cooling off. Once upon a time wind chimes would be going wild, but they’re all gone, either broken or stolen. Why someone would steal wind chimes is beyond you.

The house is just the way you remember it. Tall and white, two stories with a relatively spacious attic and basement. Your grandmother’s glider is still sitting on the front porch and a tire swing hangs from the biggest tree in the yard.

Of course there are some differences. The grass is unreasonably tall with weeds sticking out everywhere. The door is wide open, banging in the wind. The idea that other people have been in your old home brings out an aggressive protectiveness over your property and soon you’re running up the porch steps to see what’s all still there.

All the pictures remain, though the ones on the walls have mostly fallen the ground, the glass breaking. Most of the furniture is gone and a few kitchen appliances have been ripped apart.

Joel follows, but he’s quiet. Observing. It’s a little weird, sharing this with him. It means there was a real you that existed before the outbreak, a you that had a future whether it was good or bad.

Your old bedroom, however, is relatively untouched. You stand in the doorway, looking over all the old posters, the two separate bookcases with piles upon piles of books, the old duvet, your worn out shoes littering the ground. It’s so quiet with a breeze coming through the open window – you had left it open the night you evacuated.

Seven years. God, it had been seven years.

Your eyes heat up and you can’t stop the tears from rolling down your face. You find the right floorboard and lift it up, surprised to find your hidden stash has remained secret to all the intruders who have torn apart your home.

Vintage comic books, rare collectables, a good sized pile of cash that means nothing anymore. You pull out the old photo album of your childhood, your teenage years. You flip through the pages, sitting cross-legged on your bedroom floor, laughing and crying.

You don’t even notice that Joel is in the doorway, leaning against the frame.

“Life sucks,” you say in a joking tone.

You sit on your old bed with him, showing him the pictures and telling him stories. Here’s your old best friend from childhood who moved away and never spoke to you again. Here’s your first boyfriend who broke your heart. Here’s your first girlfriend who went away to college across the country. Here’s your baby sister who never made it to the bunker.

By the time you’re finished your throat is burning and the moonlight is streaming through your window. You both share a meal with the food you’ve got left.

He’s mostly quiet. Maybe it’s out of respect. Maybe he just doesn’t know what to say.

You sleep in your old bed that night, Joel insisting he take the spare room. Of course you argue, saying it’s okay for him to sleep in your parents room, it won’t be disrespectful. You almost ask him to sleep in your bed, but you don’t want to come across as too forward. No use in scaring him off now.

When morning comes you go into town and Joel finds a truck that works. You load up the back with as much as you can find. There’s at least the farm to take from, if you remember how to take care of it. Thinking about it makes you laugh. You and Joel living as farmers in post-apocalyptic New York?  

But the idea is so inviting and Joel already has the flannel. All he needs is a straw hat and a guitar.

He doesn’t think it’s funny when you find both these things and hand them over after you get back.

“What’s this?” he asks.

You have a hard time stifling your laughter. “It’s your farmer starter kit.”

“Very funny.” But there’s a twitch in his lips that betrays his tone. “For the record, I _can_ play guitar.”

This piques your interest. “Oh, really?”

“Yes, really.” He almost seems insulted you don’t believe him.

“Why don’t you play for me then?”

He shakes his head, placing both the hat and the guitar on the ground. “Some other time.”

“Oh, come on! No one’s around to laugh.”

“That ain’t quite true.” He rubs the back of his neck.

You tilt your head. Is he…afraid of embarrassing himself in front of you? _Joel_? You almost burst out laughing at the idea. This is the man you’ve seen kill countless infected and hunters, people who were innocent, people who hurt you. And he’s afraid of you not liking his singing?

Good God. Your heart warms. You’re in way too fucking deep.

“I’ll willingly embarrass myself in front of you in return,” you offer. “You can make me do whatever you want.”

You don’t miss the double meaning and you’re sure Joel doesn’t either from the way he clear his throat and picks the guitar back up like he’s really thinking about it.

“Whatever I want,” he repeats, his voice deep. A shiver goes right down to your core.

He sits down on the ground, his back against the wall and the guitar situated on his lap. You get down at his side, waiting eagerly.

He clears his throat again before he begins to strum like he’s warming up. You watch his fingers move across the strings and there’s something so sensual about it that you start to squirm. God, you want him to touch him with those fingers, to play you like he’s playing that guitar. You imagine his hands all over you, on every curve of your body, over each scar. You imagine his fingers threading through your hair, his lips on your neck.

_Stop it!_

You feel dirty for fantasizing about him while he’s next to you and you turn your attention away, choosing to look out the window before settling on closing your eyes.

And then he does something worse.

He starts to sing.

Oh, _God_.

His voice is heaven, smooth and deep and flawless. It’s soft and gentle in some places and hard and rough in others. You don’t recognize the song but it sounds old, like something your dad would listen to on a long car ride. You’re not sure whether to cry or jump his bones.

When he finishes he looks to like he’s waiting for you to start making fun of him, but you’re at a loss of words. It isn’t just his voice that’s got you speechless, it’s the sheepish look in his eyes, the vulnerability you’ve never seen before.

It’s the Joel from before the outbreak, casual and normal. No hunters, no infected, no running from your pasts. Just you and him on the floor of your house, a heat rising in your body like you’re on fire.

You don’t realize what’s happening until you’ve got your lips on his.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy i hope this chapter is worth the wait bc it's all smut lads lol
> 
> chapter warnings: explicit sexual content, langauge

When the realization hits, it hits hard. You pull back, at a loss for words. There’s a few seconds where all you hear is your own breathing.

You’re about to start an apology and make any attempt you can to save face, but he leans forward and captures your lips of his own volition. He moves the guitar off his lap and brings one hand to rest on your hip, the other goes toward your hair.

It all catches you off guard and you barely respond at first, but then it all finally starts to settle in. It’s not all just in your imagination anymore – Joel is the one kissing you, Joel is the one touching you, Joel is the one pulling you onto his lap where you sit with one leg on each side of him. It’s Joel’s warm tongue in your mouth, grazing your teeth. It’s Joel’s hands moving up your back and under your shirt, fingers resting at the hook of your bra.

It feels like a decision you’re going to regret, but you’d hate to stop now. _You don’t want to stop now._

Your shirt comes off first and it doesn’t even feel strange to bare yourself in front of him. He kisses you deeply as you work on unbuttoning his and your heart swells. It doesn’t feel like the same rough Joel from Tallahassee, his touch already more loving than your ex-husband’s ever was. Instead this the closet you’ve gotten to pre-outbreak Joel who lived a normal life with a normal family in a normal house. But now he's  _yours._

Somewhere in there he picks you up and takes you to your bedroom, laying you down on the bed before he quickly joins you, hovering over your body. You run your hands over his broad chest, tracing scars with the pads of your fingers. He initially flinches and you pull away, but then he relaxes and you lock your arms around his neck.

The noises he makes spurs you on and your thighs rub together for some kind of relief. Every wall you’d built up to keep your sexual repression at bay comes crumbling down as he grinds his hips into yours, giving you the friction you hungered for.

He reaches underneath you and expertly unhooks your bra, throwing it onto the floor before he takes one naked breast in his hand, massaging and kneading. You moan under his touch, reaching for the waist of his jeans. With kicks of his legs he helps you shed his pants and leans back to pull yours off. Your heart pounds hard when you notice the bulge in his boxers and the wet spot on the fabric. It’s hard to wrap your mind around the idea that you’re the one that caused it, but you know your own underwear is probably ruined and heat rises in your face at the thought. 

He kisses down the valley of your breasts before giving each one equal attention. You swear you hear a laugh when your back involuntarily arches.

“Something funny?” you say breathlessly

“Nothing, _darling_ ,” he says, his accent thick. You’re not sure if it’s from the arousal or if he’s just teasing you, but either way you feel even hotter between your legs.

He gets serious then, making direct eye contact with you and you notice how much his pupils have dilated.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks.

Your heart sinks into your stomach. “Why? Are you having second thoughts?”

He kisses you again. “Not a damn one.”

Relief floods you. “Me either.”

It’s been a long time. A long fucking time.

He kisses down your body and removes the last piece of clothing that shields you from him, taking his time kisses your thighs as he moves closer and closer to your core. He inserts one finger and then another, his tongue covering what he isn’t touching. You arch into his touch, your hands going to his dark hair, making him moan when you pull. The sound is heavenly, vibrating you in the right places. He pushes you to the edge as you moan his name over and over again, telling him how good he’s doing and how good it feels until you reach your climax.

He licks his fingers clean as he comes back up and kisses you, the taste of yourself on his tongue. It’s still hard to believe this is happening as you reach for his boxers, sliding them off of him.

It’s a relief when he finally enters you, the way he stretches you far more pleasurable than painful. He slows down for a moment for you to adjust, placing sweet, sloppy kisses from your lips to your neck to your collarbone. He rests on his elbows, his forehead pressed against yours.

He’s slow and steady at first, like he wants to be careful, so you lift your hips to meet his. He buries his face in the crook of your neck as he moans, the sound deep and rough against your skin. He places hot, open mouthed kisses on your neck, occasionally making small bites and running his tongue over the teeth marks. 

You feel young again, like you’re losing your virginity underneath glow in the dark stars.

He explores your body with his hands, one gripping your thigh to lift your leg so he can get a better angle. Your head flies back into the pillow, your breathing heavy while he picks up his pace, his lips back on yours.

You just can’t get enough of him, your fingers running through his hair, blunt nails scratching down his back. He leans into your touch like he’s starving for it.

His body against yours feels so natural, so comfortable, like you were both placed on this earth to be here, molded against each other. It’s a ridiculous thought but it captures your mind nonetheless. He takes one of your hands and pins it above your head, a calloused thumb running against your palm.

The bed creaks underneath your combined weight, the headboard hitting the wall from your shared movements. The smell of sweat and sex fills the air making you near delirious as you start nearing the edge, pressure building and begging for release.

You still can’t believe this is happening as you feel him start to get sloppy, his thrusts no longer in sync with yours. He must be sensing his own climax approaching because he lets go of your hand and brings his down to help push you along with his fingers, his thumb moving in circles.  

Your thoughts turn to mush as you no longer stifle your moans, your body pushing into his as much as possible as you feel yourself getting closer and closer. For a moment you pretend the world out there isn’t the way it is, that instead you’re with someone you love, someone who is cherishing your body the way you deserve and that the moment it’s over you won’t go back to reality. For just that moment you feel _free._

You grip his shoulders tightly as you find your release alongside him. It’s hot and sticky, but all you think about is Joel’s smell, Joel’s touch, Joel’s breath on your neck as he buries his moans into your skin. His fingers press temporary dents into your thighs as he finishes and you slowly come down from your high, exhaustion taking over you. It’s uncomfortable but you’re still content like this, his body on yours, pressing down on you in the aftermath. You’re out of breath but at the same time it’s like new air has filled your lungs.

He finally pulls back and presses his forehead against yours, some of his hair falling out of place. You can’t quite place the look in his eyes, but then he leans down to kiss you again. Softly, sweetly, your heart bursts again. This is the happiest you’ve been in your life and you can only hope Joel is on the same spectrum. 

When it’s over he cleans you up and you lay with him, his arm under your head, the fingers of his free hand tracing up and down your side. You don’t know how long this side of him will last and you want to savor every single moment of it. For all you know, he could be gone in the morning, metaphorically or literally. But for right now he’s here, his chest pressed against your back, naked with you under the covers of your bed.

He placed a kiss on the back of your neck and settles his head down on the pillow and you take his arm so that it’s wrapped around you.

“I love you, Joel,” you say before you fall asleep.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes im so sorry it took me so long to get to this. i got caught up in my manuscript and that ended up taking priority. 
> 
> so as a fair warning, this is the last chapter. as i've said before i do plan on making a sequel, i just need to spend some time working it out and figuring out what i want to do with it. when i start posting it i will absolutely let you guys know!
> 
> i really want to thank all of you for reading this. i know how easy it is to lose interest in a story with sporadic updates and i can't tell you guys how much i truly appreciate you sticking around this long. it really means the world to me!
> 
> also i am so sorry in advance. 
> 
> chapter warnings: language

5\. Acceptance

Joel can’t sleep that night.

He lies awake, your body next to his as you sleep soundly. It’s the quietest sleep you’ve had in a long time, so he doesn’t want to bother you.

It’s not that he regrets what just happened. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about you that way, hadn’t dreamt of you underneath him and on top of him and in other compromising positions that makes him grow warm in shame and arousal.

What he regrets is letting this… _thing_ …between you get so far.

Joel is smart. He’s a survivor. He’s killed people who slowed him down, who were the weakest links. Tommy’s made it very clear he will never forgive these acts, but at the time they were necessary.

But now he’s next to your naked body under the covers, your bare back to him as your shoulders move with each breath, trusting him not to hurt you. 

If things were different, if there weren’t infected and hunters and the world hadn’t gone to shit, he’d be making vastly different choices. He’d invite you to his bed, he’d want to act out his dreams and hear all about your own. He’d introduce you to Sarah and watch as the two of you grow closer, filling in the gap that painfully opened years ago. He’d take you to dinner, he’d stay up late watching reruns of old sitcoms with you, he’d grow old with you until one of you inevitably bites the dust.

When realizes all of this, laying on his back as he stares up at the still relatively childish ceiling of your old bedroom, his heart freezes and he knows he has no other choice. That life can’t happen. Sarah’s dead. The world has gone to shit. And there is no growing old, not anymore. It’s kill or be killed and then what? What happens if he’s left behind, ever the survivor? Could he hold you as you bleed out from bullet wound or put a gun to your head to stop you from turning? Could he bury you with his guilt or would he carry it with him?

His heart’s racing at this point and it’s like he can’t get enough air so he carefully gets out of bed and gathers up his clothes, stepping outside for just one breath to clear his head.

Joel isn’t the same man who would do all those things with you. That Joel died a long time ago and there is no bringing him back.

He returns to the bedroom one more time, standing in the doorway. You’ve turned in your sleep, facing where he had been laying just moments ago. He spots the side of your head, where you’d been butchered all because you were trying to help him.

Tommy had told him years ago that he was poison. “You turn everyone to death sooner or later,” he had said. It had been in the middle of a fight and maybe he hadn’t meant it, but it was something that sat at the back of Joel’s mind for the longest time. Now he’s finally seeing it.

He won’t poison you any longer.  

* * *

When you wake up you’re alone.

The covers are moved and his side of the bed is cold – he’s always been an early riser, but you don’t hear him downstairs. Maybe he’s outside.

You pull on your clothes, forced to go down with just your bra and the redness in your cheeks until you can retrieve your shirt from where you left it the night before. Remembering everything that happened makes you giddy, your heart too big for your chest when you recall Joel’s loving touch, proving to you how he feels even if he doesn’t say it.

You hope this means things have changed for the better. Maybe now he’ll stay for a while. Hell, maybe you’ll even return to Florida and pick up Tommy and your father and bring them back. There’s enough good land to start up a farm and if you’re feeling ambitious there’s the nearby town to clean up. All of this fills you with more hope than you’ve felt in years.

“Joel?” you call out, but he doesn’t answer.

You go searching, calling out his name over and over again, but he’s gone. But that’s nothing to worry about…right? Maybe he went into town, maybe he’s back in the house already. That doesn’t stop the cold dread pouring down your spine like a bucket of ice.

“Joel, this isn’t funny,” you say.

When enter the kitchen you notice something sitting on the table. A note. Your hands start shaking as you read it.

 

_Y/N,_

_I’m not good at goodbyes so I thought I’d save us the trouble. I’m headed back to Florida._

There’s several crossed out sentences. At some point he just gave up.

_Joel_

 

No. This is some kind of sick joke. He couldn’t…he couldn’t _do this._ He couldn’t just leave you, not after everything. Not after last night. Not when you’d finally found the courage to let yourself love him and be loved by him.

Yet the note didn’t lie. Or the cold spot on the bed. Or his absence from the house.

He left. He really fucking left.

Part of you wants to cry. Another part wants to scream. Somehow there’s a third part that wants to go running after him but you don’t know where to look and you’re not sure you can make it back to Florida by yourself.

You curse him out, calling him names and wishing pain on him even if you don’t entirely mean it. You hope his car crashes and he’s desperate for help but you’re not there to take care of him, but you don’t want him to die either, even if your own pain is killing you now.

The worst is the feeling of being _used._ Had he meant anything from last night? Or was it some sort of sick hoorah for him, to finally bed you before he takes off? It makes you so nauseous that you almost run to the bathroom, but instead you fall to the floor, your legs bent in front of you.

You never wanted to admit it but if there’s anything you know, it’s this:

Joel always leaves.

* * *

“Stop scratching it, you’ll make it worse.”

“But it itches!”

“Just trust me on this.”

When Joel turns away, Ellie quickly starts scratching at the mosquito bite on her arm and makes a face at his back. It doesn’t itch any less.

The road ahead is still long, but the spring bloom raises Ellie’s spirits. Her nightmares still plague her sleep, but Joel tells her it gets better. It might be a lie. She doesn’t know. But it’s something to hold on to.

“Why couldn’t bugs go extinct?” she whines, impulsively kicking an empty soda can and cringing at how loud it is. With her gaze on the ground she nearly walks into Joel who has come to a stop. “What are you-”

She follows his stare to see some statue with a pointed crown and a torch in one hand. It’s just lying there on a table outside a shop. But then Joel is back to normal, walking away from the thing that just stopped him in his tracks.

“What was that?” she asks.

“Nothing.” He’s gruff like he always gets when something has struck a nerve.

“Oh.”

Nothing always means something and something always means pain. Whatever that statue was, it meant nothing and something all at once, but Ellie knows better than to pry.

“So what happens when we get there?” she asks for a change of subject.

“I don’t know,” says Joel. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“You’re not gonna…leave me, are you?”

He stops again, something in his eyes that she can’t quite place. “Ellie…I ain’t leaving you.”

“You promise?”

He pauses and for a moment and Ellie grows worried he’ll say no. But then he answers.

“I promise.”


	19. Sequel

hey everyone! just dropping by to say that i've posted the first chapter of [the sequel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15923372/chapters/37122899)! thanks again to everyone reading this, i can't tell you guys how much your kinds words mean to me!!!


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